The Lebanese president defends the truce as a “necessary step” for negotiations and rejects criticism from Hezbollah

The president of Lebanon, Joseph Aoun, noted this Monday that the ceasefire is a “necessary first step” for any negotiations with Israel, insisting that critics of the talks, such as the Shiite militia party group Hezbollah, must “wait” for them to take place and “judge the result.”

“The ceasefire is a necessary initial step for any subsequent negotiations, and this is what we repeated in the two sessions held at the ambassadorial level,” Aoun stated, emphasizing that the statement from the US State Department, which facilitates the talks, establishes that “Israel will not carry out offensive operations against Lebanese objectives”, both civilian and military of the Lebanese State.

Thus, in a message broadcast by his office on social networks, the Lebanese president responded to Hezbollah’s criticism for promoting direct contacts with Israel. “Some reproach us for having decided to go to negotiations alleging the lack of national consensus. I ask: when you opted for war, did you first have a national consensus?” he assured, in reference to the offensive launched by Hezbollah in the context of the war in Iran and which served as a pretext for Israel to attack and invade the south of the country.

Faced with criticism that Beirut is going to negotiate from “surrender”, Aoun has urged critics to “wait for the negotiations to begin and judge the outcome.”

In this way, he has rejected that his commitment to dialogue with Israel is a “betrayal” or represents a “humiliation”: “What we do is not treason, but treason is committed by those who take their country to war to achieve external interests,” he noted in another reference to Hezbollah, a group closely linked to Iran.

In this sense, he has claimed that his responsibility is to lead Lebanon along “the path of salvation.” “My objective is to end the state of war with Israel, in the style of the truce agreement. Was the truce agreement humiliating? I will not accept reaching a humiliating agreement,” he warned.

REPROACHES FROM HEZBOLLAH ABOUT NEGOTIATIONS IT DOES NOT RECOGNIZE

These statements respond to criticism from Hezbollah, whose general secretary of the Shiite party-militia Hezbollah, Naim Qasem, has expressed his “absolute rejection” of direct negotiations between Lebanon and Israel, stating that these talks “do not exist” for the group, which will continue with “the resistance” and “responding to the aggression” of the Israeli Army in the south of the country.

In a statement carried by the Lebanese television network Al Manar, Qasem criticized this process of talks, after indicating that what both Israel and the United States “want” is “not in the hands of the Lebanese authorities.”

The leader of Hezbollah has denounced “humiliating and unnecessary” concessions on Beirut’s side, after warning that Israel and the United States only seek “submission without obtaining anything in return.”

These internal clashes in Lebanon add to the fragility of the extension of the ceasefire for three more weeks announced by the president of the United States, Donald Trump, after contacts held in the White House with representatives of both parties.

The persistence of incidents on the ground reflects the difficulty of consolidating the truce, after Hezbollah has launched attacks that have left one Israeli soldier dead and four seriously wounded, amid continued Israeli attacks in the south of the country.

The current cycle of violence is part of the escalation that began on March 2, when Hezbollah launched missiles against Israel in retaliation for the death of the Iranian supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in the context of US and Israeli attacks against Iran. Since then, Israel has carried out an intense campaign of bombings and ground raids in southern Lebanon, where it maintains a military presence despite the ceasefire.