Hezbollah will not let anyone disarms it, “said the leader of the Lebanese group Naim Qassem on Friday, April 18, while Washington presses Beirut to force the movement supported to Iran to deliver his weapons. Hezbollah, for a long time a dominant force in Lebanese politics, left weakened for more than a year of hostilities with Israel caused by the Gaza War, including an incursion into the Israeli field and two months of heavy bombing.
The fight put an end to its high the fire of November, but not before the former leader of the group and the predecessor of Qassem, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli air strike.
“We will not let anyone disarm Hezbollah or disarmament,” against Israel, Qassem said in comments on a television channel affiliated with Hezbollah. “We must reduce this idea of disarming the dictionary.” His comments occurred hours after another Hezbollah official said that the group refused to discuss the delivery about their weapons unless Israel retired completely from the south of Lebanon and stopped his “aggression.”
“It is not a matter of disarming,” said Wafs Safa in an interview with the Al-Nur Radio Station in Hezbollah. “What the president (Joseph Aoun) said in his inauguration speech is a defensive strategy.”
Safa, believed by the experts who belonged to the most radical faction of the movement, said that Hezbollah had transmitted his position to Aoun, who on Tuesday said he was looking for “to make 2025 the year of restriction of weapons to the state.”
In his interview, Safa asked: “Wouldn’t it be logical for Israel to retire first, then free the prisoners, then his aggression ceases … and then we discuss a defensive strategy? The defensive strategy is about how to protect Lebanon”, analysts have said that the idea once injectable or the disarmament of Hezbollah cannot be so inevitable and can be inevitable.
‘The problem is Israel’
Under the high the fire of November, Israel was destined to withdraw all its forces from the south of Lebanon, but despite the agreement, its troops have remained in five positions in the south of Lebanon that they consider “strategic.”
Israel has also continued to carry out almost daily attacks against Lebanon, including Friday, which is aimed at members of Hezbollah. Under the truce, Hezbollah had to get his fighters north of the Litani River of Lebanon and dismantle any remote military infrastructure in the south. The Army of Lebanon has been deployed in the south when Israeli forces retired.
Hezbolá says that the high fire does not apply to the rest of Lebanon, despite being based on resolution 1701 of the UN Security Council, which requires the disarmament of non -state groups. Hezbollah was the only group to maintain their weapons after Lebanon’s 15 -year civil war ended in 1990, saying that they were for “resistance” against Israel, which continued to occupy the south until 2000.
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Special Envoy of the United States for the Middle East Morgan Ortago, who visited Beirut this month, said Washington continued to press Beirut “to completely fulfill the cessation of hostilities, and that includes disarming Hezbollah and all militias.”
Safa said Friday that both Hezbollah and the Lebanese army respected the terms of the truce. “The problem is Israel, who has not done so.”
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