Hezbollah sets its conditions.
The pro-Iranian movement will only stop its attacks against Israel with a ceasefire in Gaza, its leader said Tuesday, accusing foreign mediators seeking to ease tensions in southern Lebanon of serving Israel's interests. .
“When the aggression in Gaza stops and there is a ceasefire, the shooting will also stop in the south” of Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech.
“If they widen the confrontation, we will do it too,” also affirmed the leader of the Lebanese Islamist movement, in response to repeated threats from Israeli officials to start a war against Lebanon.
Since the day after the bloody Hamas attack in Israel on October 7, which sparked the war in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah has targeted Israeli military positions on the border in support of the Palestinian Islamist movement, its ally.
Israel, for its part, regularly bombs southern Lebanon and carries out targeted attacks against Hezbollah officials.
Also read: Israel-Hezbollah: a war on the Lebanese border ever closer?
The violence has caused the displacement of tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border.
Hassan Nasrallah warned that if Israel provoked a war against Lebanon, the displaced from northern Israeli territory "would not return" and that officials should in this case work to "prepare shelters, hotels, schools and tents for two million displaced people from the north of Israel.
“Let no one think that Lebanon is weak”
The leader of Hezbollah also criticized the successive foreign emissaries in Beirut to try to de-escalate tensions.
“All the delegations that have come to Lebanon over the last four months (…) have one goal: to protect Israel,” said the leader of Hezbollah.
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Hezbollah leader threatens regional extension of conflict between Israel and Hamas
The French plan provides, according to diplomatic sources, for an end to violence on both sides of the common border and a withdrawal of Hezbollah fighters ten to twelve kilometers north of the border.
“Let no one think that Lebanon is weak, that it is afraid, and that it can impose conditions on us, seven or ten kilometers away,” said the leader of Hezbollah.
In more than four months, at least 243 people, including 175 Hezbollah fighters and 30 civilians, have been killed in southern Lebanon, according to an AFP count.
On the Israeli side, 15 people were killed, according to the army.