Hezbollah chief again rejects Lebanon-Israel deal, refuses ‘surrender’
Wire desk byline Sourced from Xinhua, Dawn, Arab News, Anadolu and Minute Mirror. Translated and abridged by the GSRRA Desk.
Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem again rejects a deal struck between Israel and Lebanon and says his Iran-backed terror group refuses to “surrender” nearly six months after war erupted with Israel.
“We are against the framework agreement and call for its downfall,” Qassem says in a televised address broadcast on the group’s Al-Manar television channel.
Israel and Lebanon launched US-sponsored direct talks after Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East war on March 2 by attacking Israel, which responded with massive strikes and a ground invasi
that Lebanese authorities say have killed more than 4,300 people.
At talks in late June, Lebanon and Israel signed a framework deal that calls for the disarmament of Hezbollah, a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from south Lebanon and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the region, starting in “pilot zones.”
“The framework agreement is illegitimate, unlawful, humiliating, destructive to Lebanese sovereignty,” Qassem says.
“We do not agree to the ‘pilot zones’ or to what comes from them,” he says, also rejecting any proposed verification system.
A fresh round of talks is planned for early September, but no date has been announced yet.
Qassem says his group supported the implementation of a November 2024 ceasefire that sought to end a previous war with Israel.
“We will keep our heads high and we will not surrender,” he vows.
Reference Link:- https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/hezbollah-chief-again-rejects-lebanon-israel-deal-refuses-surrender/
Zamir Ahmed Awan is the founder and Chair of the Global Silk Route Research Alliance, a think tank in Islamabad. He studied engineering at Shanghai University in the 1980s, and years later he went back to China as Pakistan's science counsellor in Beijing, from 2010 until 2016, working on science and higher education cooperation between the two countries.…
