Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said Monday that direct negotiations with Israel were aimed at ending the conflict with Hezbollah, while accusing those who drew Lebanon into war of “treason” in an implicit rebuke to the Iran-backed armed group.
“My goal is to reach an end to the state of war with Israel, similar to the armistice agreement” of 1949, Aoun said in a statement, adding that “I assure you that I will not accept reaching a humiliating agreement.”
“Those who dragged us into war in Lebanon are now holding us accountable because we made the decision to go to negotiations,” Aoun said in a statement posted on Lebanese presidency's social media.
He added: “What we are doing is not treason; rather, treason is committed by those who take their country to war to achieve foreign interests.”
“Some hold us accountable for deciding to go to negotiations on the pretext of the lack of national consensus, and I ask: When you went to war, did you first obtain national consensus?” Aoun commented.
Lebanon and Israel’s US ambassadors held two meetings in Washington over the past weeks, the first of their kind in decades.
The first meeting led to a truce in the Israel-Hezbollah war, while Beirut has been preparing for direct negotiations with the aim of striking a peace deal with Israel. The two countries have officially been at war since 1948.
‘Spiral of instability’
“We categorically reject direct negotiations with Israel, and those in power should know that their actions will not benefit Lebanon or themselves,” Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said in a statement, aired by the group’s channel Al-Manar.
He called on authorities to “back down from their grave sin that is putting Lebanon in a spiral of instability.”
He added that the Lebanese government “cannot continue while it is neglecting Lebanon’s rights, giving up land, and confronting its resistant people.”
“These direct negotiations and their outcomes are as if they do not exist for us, and they do not concern us in the slightest,” Qassem said.
“We will continue our defensive resistance for Lebanon and its people,” he added.
“No matter how much the enemy threatens, we will not back down, we will not bow down, and we will not be defeated.
“We will not give up our weapons … and the Israeli enemy will not remain on a single inch of our occupied land.”
Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli strikes on the country’s south on Sunday killed 14 people, the deadliest day since a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war came into force over a week ago.
Since the truce went into force on April 17, Israeli strikes have killed at least 36 people, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures.
Hezbollah has meanwhile claimed several attacks on Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, as well as missile and drone launches at northern Israel, saying it is responding to Israeli “violations.”
– with AFP
