Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem has rejected Lebanon’s planned direct negotiations with Israel, branding them a “grave sin” that will destabilise the country.
His remarks come after Lebanon and Israel’s US ambassadors held two rare meetings in Washington in recent weeks, the first such encounters in decades. The initial meeting helped secure a truce in the ongoing Israel–Hezbollah war, and Beirut has been preparing for direct talks aimed at reaching a peace deal with Israel, a country it has officially been at war with since 1948.
“We categorically reject direct negotiations with Israel, and those in power should know that their actions will not benefit Lebanon or themselves,” Qassem said in a statement broadcast on Hezbollah’s Al‑Manar TV channel. He urged authorities to “back down from their grave sin that is putting Lebanon in a spiral of instability,” accusing the government of neglecting Lebanon’s rights, giving up land and confronting its own “resistant people”.
Lebanese officials insist the US‑sponsored process is meant to end the war, secure Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon and allow more than a million displaced people to return home. Qassem however said the direct talks and any outcomes are “as if they do not exist for us” and “do not concern us in the slightest,” vowing that Hezbollah will continue its “defensive resistance for Lebanon and its people”.
He stressed that the group would not surrender its weapons or back down in the face of Israeli threats, declaring that “the Israeli enemy will not remain on a single inch of our occupied land”. Hezbollah also condemned a clause in the US‑announced truce terms that allows Israel to keep targeting the group to prevent “planned, imminent, or ongoing attacks,” saying the agreement’s text was never formally presented to the Lebanese cabinet, where Hezbollah and its allies sit.
Tehran‑backed Hezbollah opened a new front in the Middle East war on March 2 by firing rockets at Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei in US‑Israeli strikes, according to Lebanese authorities. Since the April 17 truce took effect, Israeli strikes have killed at least 36 people, while more than 2,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since March 2, based on figures from Lebanese officials compiled by AFP.
The group says its rocket, missile and drone attacks on Israeli forces in southern Lebanon and northern Israel are a response to continued Israeli “violations”. Qassem questioned whether the Lebanese government had effectively decided “to work alongside the Israeli enemy against its own people,” deepening internal tensions over the direction of the talks and the future of Hezbollah’s role.
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