
Hezbollah Threatens to Ignore Potential Israel-Lebanon Deal
Standing near a cemetery as an Israeli drone buzzed overhead, a senior Hezbollah official delivered a blunt warning in an interview Tuesday.
Wafiq Safa said the terror group would refuse to abide by any agreement that would be hammered out in talks between Lebanon and Israel.
“As for the outcomes of this negotiation between Lebanon and the Israeli enemy, we are not interested in or concerned with them at all,” he said. “We are not bound by what they agree to.”
The talks are unusual because the two countries do not have diplomatic ties to each other, and the outcome may well rest on Lebanon’s ability to rein in Hezbollah, which has signaled that it will not be reined in.
The previous day, Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s leader, blasted Lebanon’s decision to ban Hezbollah as “stabbing the resistance in the back” and denounced the government for holding talks with Israel.
“Israel and the United States have openly stated they want to strengthen the army to disarm Hezbollah, fight it, dismantle its institutions and eliminate the resistance, its people and all who support it,” he told supporters in a prerecorded video address. “They want the [Lebanese] army to fight its own people — something the army cannot and will not do.”
Qassem characterized the scheduled negotiations as “futile and humiliating” and warned that Hezbollah would “remain steadfast, keep our heads held high and liberate the land.”