Hezbollah demands Israel ‘stop its aggression... release the prisoners' as US proposes disarmament

News24

12 hours ago

US envoy Thomas Barrack proposed that Lebanon disarms Hezbollah.
Israel continues its occupation of southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem insists the organisation still needs its weapons.
A US envoy met Lebanese officials in Beirut on Monday to discuss a proposed plan to disarm Hezbollah, hours after Israel launched new air strikes and a cross-border ground assault.
The Israeli escalation was seen by Lebanese officials and diplomats as an attempt to ratchet up pressure on Hezbollah, whose leader Naim Qassem said in a televised speech on Sunday that the group still needed arms to defend Lebanon from Israel.
Hezbollah emerged badly damaged from a war with Israel last year that eliminated much of the group's leadership, killed thousands of its fighters and left tens of thousands of its supporters displaced from their destroyed homes.
The group has been under pressure in recent months both within Lebanon and from Washington to completely relinquish its weapons.
It is weighing shrinking its arsenal, sources told Reuters last week, without disarming in full.
US envoy Thomas Barrack's proposal, delivered to Lebanese officials during his last visit on 19 June, would see Hezbollah fully disarmed within four months in exchange for the withdrawal of Israeli troops occupying several posts in south Lebanon and a halt to Israeli air strikes.
Lebanon formed a committee to draft a response.
Hezbollah was expected to provide its own feedback to its ally, Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, to incorporate into a counter-proposal being prepared in time for Barrack's Monday visit.
The group did not make its response public, but two sources familiar with its deliberations said Hezbollah had told Berri it would not discuss giving up any more arms before Israeli troops fully left Lebanon and without guarantees Israel would stop targeting group members.
Hezbollah had already relinquished a number of weapons depots in southern Lebanon to the Lebanese army in line with a US-brokered truce that ended last year's war.
The truce also stipulates that Israeli troops withdraw.
Hezbollah has pointed to the troops' continued occupation of at least five posts in southern Lebanon as a main violation.
AFP reported that Qassem said on Sunday his group would not surrender or lay down its weapons in response to Israeli threats, despite pressure on the Lebanese militants to disarm.
'This (Israeli) threat will not make us accept surrender,' Qassem said in a televised speech to thousands of his supporters in Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, during the Shi'ite Muslim religious commemoration of Ashura.
Lebanese leaders who took office in the aftermath of a war between Israel and Hezbollah last year that left the Iran-backed group severely weakened have repeatedly vowed a state monopoly on bearing arms, while demanding Israel comply with a November ceasefire that sought to end the hostilities.
Qassem, who succeeded longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah after an Israeli strike killed him in September, said the group's fighters would not abandon their arms and asserted that Israel's 'aggression' must first stop.
Mahmoud Zayyat/AFP
Lebanese authorities say they have been dismantling Hezbollah's military infrastructure in the south near the Israeli border.
Qassem said Israel must abide by the ceasefire agreement, 'withdraw from the occupied territories, stop its aggression... release the prisoners' detained during last year's war, and that reconstruction in Lebanon must begin.
Only then 'will we be ready for the second stage, which is to discuss the national security and defence strategy' which includes the issue of group's disarmament, he added.
Supporters dressed in black for Ashura marched through Beirut's southern suburbs before his speech, waving Hezbollah banners as well as the Lebanese, Palestinian and Iranian flags.
Some also carried posters of the slain leader Nasrallah.
Hussein Jaber, 28, originally from south Lebanon, said the group's weapons 'can't be handed over, not now, not later. Those who think Hezbollah will turn in its arms are ignorant.'
In his speech, Qassem also said his movement 'will not accept normalisation with the Israeli enemy', after Israel's top diplomat said his government was 'interested' in such a move.
Lebanon, which is technically still at war with Israel, did not comment.
Syria, also mentioned by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, said it was 'premature' to discuss normalisation.