Hezbollah’s deputy leader says group would stop fighting with Israel after Gaza cease-fire
UNB
Publish: 03 Jul 2024, 04:37 PM
BEIRUT,
July 03 (AP/UNB) - The deputy leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah
said Tuesday the only sure path to a cease-fire on the Lebanon-Israel border is
a full cease-fire in Gaza.
"If there is a
cease-fire in Gaza, we will stop without any discussion," Hezbollah's
deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Kassem, said in an interview with The Associated
Press at the group's political office in Beirut's southern suburbs.
Hezbollah's
participation in the Israel-Hamas war has been as a "support front"
for its ally, Hamas, Kassem said, and "if the war stops, this military
support will no longer exist."
But, he said, if Israel
scales back its military operations without a formal cease-fire agreement and
full withdrawal from Gaza, the implications for the Lebanon-Israel border
conflict are less clear.
"If what happens in
Gaza is a mix between cease-fire and no cease-fire, war and no war, we can't
answer (how we would react) now, because we don't know its shape, its results,
its impacts," Kassem said during a 40-minute interview.
The war began on Oct. 7
after Hamas militants invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 - mostly
civilians - and kidnapping roughly 250. Israel responded with an air and ground
assault that has caused widespread devastation and killed more than 37,900 people
in Gaza, according to the territory's Health Ministry, which does not
distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
Talks of a cease-fire in
Gaza have faltered in recent weeks, raising fears of an escalation on the
Lebanon-Israel front. Hezbollah has traded near-daily strikes with Israeli
forces along their border over the past nine months.
The low-level conflict
between Israel and Hezbollah has displaced tens of thousands on both sides of
the Israel-Lebanon border. In northern Israel, 16 soldiers and 11 civilians
have been killed; in Lebanon, more than 450 people - mostly fighters but also
dozens of civilians - have been killed
Hamas has demanded an
end to the war in Gaza, and not just a pause in fighting, while Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to make such a commitment until Israel
realizes its goals of destroying Hamas' military and governing capabilities and
brings home the roughly 120 hostages still held by Hamas.
Last month, the Israeli
army said it had "approved and validated" plans for an offensive in
Lebanon if no diplomatic solution was reached to the ongoing clashes. Any
decision to launch such an operation would have to come from the country's political
leadership.
Some Israeli officials
have said they are seeking a diplomatic solution to the standoff and hope to
avoid war. At the same time, they have warned that the scenes of destruction
seen in Gaza will be repeated in Lebanon if war breaks out.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, is
far more powerful than Hamas and believed to have a vast arsenal of rockets and
missiles capable of striking anywhere in Israel.
Kassem said he doesn't
believe that Israel currently has the ability - or has made a decision - to
launch a full-blown war with Hezbollah. He warned that even if Israel intends
to launch a limited operation in Lebanon that stops short of a full-scale war,
it should not expect the fighting to remain limited.
"Israel can decide
what it wants: limited war, total war, partial war," he said. "But it
should expect that our response and our resistance will not be within a ceiling
and rules of engagement set by Israel... If Israel wages the war, it means it
doesn't control its extent or who enters into it."
The latter was an
apparent reference to Hezbollah's allies in the Iran-backed so-called
"axis of resistance" in the region. Armed groups in Iraq, Syria,
Yemen and elsewhere - and, potentially, Iran itself - could enter the fray in
the event of a full-scale war in Lebanon, which might also pull in Israel's
strongest ally, the United States.
U,S. and European
diplomats have made a circuit between Lebanon and Israel for months in an
attempt to ward off a wider conflict.
Kassem said he met on
Saturday with Germany's deputy chief of intelligence, Ole Dieh, in Beirut. U.S.
officials do not meet directly with Hezbollah because Washington has designated
it a terrorist group, but they regularly send messages via intermediaries.
Kassem said White House
envoy Amos Hochstein had recently requested via intermediaries that Hezbollah
apply pressure on Hamas to accept a cease-fire and hostage-exchange proposal
put forward by U.S. President Joe Biden. He said Hezbollah had rejected the
request.
"Hamas is the one
that makes its decisions and whoever wants to ask for something should talk to
it directly," he said.
Kassem criticized U.S.
efforts to find a resolution to the war in Gaza, saying it has backed Israel's
plans to end Hamas' presence in Gaza. A constructive deal, he said, would aim
to end the war, get Israel to withdraw from Gaza, and ensure the release of
hostages.
Once a cease-fire is
reached, then a political track can determine the arrangements inside Gaza and
on the front with Lebanon, he added.