A prominent member of Hezbollah’s political wing, Lebanese parliamentarian Ali Fayyad, said in a statement on Friday that the three-week extension of the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire announced the previous day by President Trump in Washington was “meaningless” in light of continued “hostile acts” by Israel.
Fayyad, a longtime member of the Iranian-backed group which is both a powerful political entity in Lebanon and a well-armed proxy force for Tehran, said Hezbollah reserved the right to respond to any future Israeli “aggressions.”
“A ceasefire is meaningless in light of Israel’s continued escalation of hostile actions — assassinations, bombardment, and opening fire — as well as its ongoing destructive annihilation of Lebanese border villages and towns, and its insistence on freedom of movement under the pretext of potential threats,” Fayyad said in a statement conveyed by Lebanon’s official National News Agency.
The freedom of movement remark was likely in reference to Israel’s military occupation of a buffer zone across southern Lebanon. Israeli leaders say troops will remain in the zone, which extends about six miles into Lebanese territory, indefinitely, and that residents will not be allowed to return until the threat posed by Hezbollah to Israeli residents is eliminated.
Florion Goga/REUTERS
Fayyad said the extension of the agreement between Israel and Lebanon’s government, which Hezbollah has not been involved in negotiating, was “something the resistance cannot accept; it firmly rejects and confronts it.”
“Any Israeli aggression against any Lebanese target, regardless of its nature, gives the resistance the right to respond appropriately,” he said. “Likewise, any ceasefire that does not constitute a prelude linked to Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanese territory affirms the Lebanese people’s firm and final right to resist the occupation and expel it from our land in order to restore full Lebanese sovereignty.”
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