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Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem urged Lebanon on Monday to cancel a planned meeting with Israel in Washington the following day, reiterating his group’s rejection of direct negotiations with Israel.
“We reject negotiations with the usurping Israeli entity…We call for a historic and heroic stance by cancelling this negotiating meeting,” Qassem, whose Iran-backed group has been at war with Israel since 2 March, said in a televised address.
The Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors to the United States are scheduled to meet in Washington on Tuesday to discuss holding direct negotiations between the two countries.
Lebanese authorities have stressed that Beirut first wants to secure a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war, but Israel has dismissed that prospect, saying it prefers instead to focus on formal peace talks with Lebanon itself, with which it has technically been at war for decades.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that “we want the dismantling of Hezbollah’s weapons and we want a real peace agreement that will last for generations.”
To Qassem, “these negotiations are futile and require a Lebanese agreement and consensus.”
Hours after Tehran and Washington announced a truce last Wednesday, Israel launched more than 100 strikes across Lebanon, including in densely packed residential and commercial areas of central Beirut.
“We will not surrender,” Qassem said as his fighters faced off with advancing Israeli troops in southern Lebanon.
“We will remain in the field until our last breath.”
Hezbollah’s entry into the war
Israel and Hezbollah have fought multiple wars since the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group was formed in the 1980s as a guerrilla force fighting against Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon at the time.
The latest round began on 2 March, two days after Israel and the US launched a war on Iran. Hezbollah entered the fray, firing missiles across the border into Israel. Israel responded with aerial bombardment and a ground invasion.
Since then, the war has displaced more than 1 million people in Lebanon and killed more than 2,000, including more than 500 women, children and medical workers.
Many Lebanese have blamed Hezbollah for pulling Lebanon into the war, accusing it of acting on behalf of its patron, Iran.
Wafiq Safa, a high-ranking member of Hezbollah’s political council, said Hezbollah’s actions were pre-emptive because its leaders believed “Israel was preparing for a second battle with Lebanon” with the aim of destroying Hezbollah.
It was “an appropriate moment for Hezbollah…to rebuild a new equation” and restore deterrence against Israel, he said, denying any prior deals with Tehran that Hezbollah would enter the war if Iran was attacked.
After a US-brokered ceasefire halted the last Israel-Hezbollah war in November 2024, Israel continued to carry out near-daily strikes in Lebanon that it said aimed to stop the group from rebuilding.
Hezbollah wants to avoid a return to that status quo, Safa said.
Additional sources • AP, AFP