Hezbollah Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem called Friday for “reversing the sinful, disgraceful and humiliating mistake” of Lebanon negotiating peace with Israel. File Photo by Wael Hamzeh/EPA
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Aug. 14 (UPI) — Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem lashed out at the Lebanese officials Friday for accepting the June 26 U.S.-brokered framework agreement with Israel and failing to secure any gains after seven rounds of negotiations.
He called for an end to “the humiliation” and urging the officials to reverse “the sinful mistake.”
Qassem said in a speech broadcast by Hezbollah-run Al Manar TV that the initial agreement, a conditional and phased process aimed at ending the state of war, amounted to “Israeli dictates” that gave Israel “everything it wants,” while the Lebanese authorities relinquished their sovereignty.
He called for “reversing the sinful, disgraceful and humiliating mistake,” which raises question marks about “what these officials are doing.”
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun decided to engage in direct talks with Israel in what he believed was the only viable path to ending the war, despite Hezbollah’s staunch opposition. Aoun was betting that U.S. President Donald Trump alone could pressure Israel to withdraw its troops and help Lebanon restore its sovereignty.
The war broke out when Hezbollah opened a support front for Gaza on Oct. 8, 2023, and resumed fighting in solidarity with Iran on March 2 this year, triggering a massive Israeli retaliation that significantly degraded the Iran-backed group and caused widespread destruction in southern Lebanon and other parts of the country.
Israel, which reduced some 70 border villages in southern Lebanon to rubble and rendered them uninhabitable while occupying a 6-mile “buffer zone,” insists that it will not withdraw its troops unless Hezbollah is completely disarmed.
The framework agreement, reached by Lebanese and Israeli negotiating teams under pressure from Washington, provides for a phased Israeli withdrawal from occupied parts of southern Lebanon to allow the Lebanese Army to “restore effective sovereign authority,” beginning with its deployment in two initial pilot zones.
The initial accord also addressed plans to disarm Hezbollah, Iran’s main proxy and once its most powerful regional non-state armed actor.
Despite the Lebanese Army’s deployment in the village of Zawtar al-Gharbieh — the first pilot zone in southern Lebanon — Israel continued to carry out strikes, destroy homes and demolish Hezbollah tunnels and military infrastructure.
Qassem pointed out that Israel would not have carried out “all this aggression and genocide without the Americans.”
Addressing Lebanese officials, he asked them to “name a single achievement from the seven rounds of negotiations. Israel got everything it wanted and everything it sought.”
He accused the officials of failing to withdraw from the negotiations with Israel, saying that what is happening “amounts to surrender, which we do not accept.”
Qassem credited Iran for progress, saying that the Iran-U.S. negotiations in Islamabad brought about the return of displaced people to southern Lebanon and a cease-fire that reduced the escalation, rather than the direct negotiations.
He said the war was “an existential war of aggression,” and that his group would “stand firm and defeat the Israeli project” and that those betting on surrender were “betting on a mirage.”
