Hezbollah official says the group won’t abide by any agreements from Lebanon-Israel talks in the US
BEIRUT (AP) — The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah will not abide by any agreements that may result from the direct Lebanon-Israel talks in the United States, negotiations it firmly opposes, a senior Hezbollah official said Monday.
Wafiq Safa, a high-ranking member of Hezbollah’s political council, spoke on the eve of the talks expected in Washington between Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors to the U.S. It will be the first time in decades that envoys from Lebanon and Israel, which do not have diplomatic relations, meet face-to-face in direct talks.
“As for the outcomes of this negotiation between Lebanon and the Israeli enemy, we are not interested in or concerned with them at all,” Safa told The Associated Press.
“We are not bound by what they agree to,” he added in a rare interview with international media. He spoke next to a cemetery as an Israeli drone buzzed overhead.
Historic negotiations at a sensitive time
Lebanese officials are looking to broker a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war in the U.S. talks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, has said the goal is Hezbollah’s disarmament and a potential peace agreement between Lebanon and Israel. Shosh Bedrosian, a spokesperson for Netanyahu said Monday that there will be no ceasefire with Hezbollah.
Separately, in U.S.-Iran peace talks held last weekend in Pakistan, Iran has sought to include Lebanon in any ceasefire deal of its own with the U.S. Israel and the U.S. have insisted Lebanon would not be a part of it.
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.
And though the U.S.-Iran talks broke up without an agreement, Safa said Hezbollah has been informed that Iran “was able to obtain a cessation of attacks” in the entire administrative region of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, including Beirut’s southern suburbs — a Hezbollah-strong area known as Dahiyeh.
Israeli strikes on Beirut and its southern suburbs have halted since Wednesday but intense fighting has continued in southern Lebanon.
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 March 2, two days after Israel and the U.S. 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.
Safa said Hezbollah’s actions were preemptive 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 U.S.-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.
‘Black Wednesday’
Israel has claimed that its strikes on Lebanon last Wednesday killed more than 250 Hezbollah militants. More than 100 women and children were among the over 350 people killed, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
That would mean that, according to Israel’s assertion, every adult male killed that day was a Hezbollah member.
“None of our officials or cadres was killed in Beirut,” Safa said. ”Those who died in Beirut are 100% civilians.” He did not deny that members of the group were killed outside of the Lebanese capital.
Israel claimed to have killed Hezbollah leader Naim Kassem’s secretary who was also his nephew, Ali Yusuf Harshi, as well as some high-level commanders.
Safa said Kassem’s secretary was not killed, although “maybe a relative of his was.”
He also confirmed for the first time that he was wounded during the earlier, 2024 Israel-Hezbollah war, after being targeted by two Israeli strikes in Beirut, “but God granted me survival.”
Later Monday in a televised address, Kassem himself urged Lebanon to pull out of direct talks with Israel, calling the negotiations a “free concession” to Israel and the U.S.
Souring relations with the government
Relations between the Lebanese government and Hezbollah — which is not just a militant group but also a political party with a parliamentary bloc — have grown increasingly tense.
The government last year approved a plan to remove all weapons that are not property of the state — its security forces or military — and later said it had largely completed the task south of the Litani River, where Hezbollah militants are now fighting with Israeli forces.
After March 2, the government went further, declaring Hezbollah’s armed wing illegal.
Safa said Hezbollah is currently not directly speaking with President Joseph Aoun or Prime Minister Nawaf Salam but that all its communications are going through Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, the head of the Hezbollah-allied Amal party.
Safa said that if there is a ceasefire and a withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon, Hezbollah — which calls itself a “resistance” movement against archenemy Israel — is ready to negotiate with the Lebanese government about the fate of its weapons.
“The issue of resistance weapons is a Lebanese matter that has nothing to do with Israel or the United States,” he said.