BEIRUT (AP) — The deputy chief of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah mentioned Tuesday the one certain path to a cease-fire on the Lebanon-Israel border is a full cease-fire in Gaza.
“If there’s a cease-fire in Gaza, we are going to cease with none dialogue,” Hezbollah’s deputy chief, Sheikh Naim Kassem, mentioned in an interview with The Related Press on the group’s political workplace in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Hezbollah’s participation within the Israel-Hamas war has been as a “help entrance” for its ally, Hamas, Kassem mentioned, and “if the conflict stops, this navy help will now not exist.”
However, he mentioned, if Israel scales again its navy operations and not using a formal cease-fire settlement and full withdrawal from Gaza, the implications for the Lebanon-Israel border battle are much less clear.
“If what occurs in Gaza is a combination between cease-fire and no cease-fire, conflict and no conflict, we are able to’t reply (how we might react) now, as a result of we don’t know its form, its outcomes, its impacts,” Kassem mentioned throughout a 40-minute interview.
In latest weeks, with Gaza cease-fire talks faltering, fears have elevated of an escalation on the Lebanon-Israel entrance. Hezbollah has traded near-daily strikes with Israeli forces alongside their border over the previous 9 months. The low-level battle between Israel and Hezbollah has displaced tens of hundreds on each side of the Israel-Lebanon border.
Months of internationally brokered Gaza cease-fire talks have repeatedly failed. Hamas has demanded an finish to the conflict, and never only a pause in preventing, whereas Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to make such a dedication till Israel realizes its objectives of destroying Hamas’ navy and governing capabilities and brings residence the roughly 120 hostages held by Hamas.
Final month, the Israeli military mentioned it has “accredited and validated” plans for an offensive in Lebanon if no diplomatic resolution is reached to the continued clashes. Any determination to launch such an operation must come from the nation’s political management.
Some Israeli officers have mentioned they’re in search of a diplomatic resolution to the standoff and hope to keep away from conflict. On the identical time, they’ve warned that the scenes of destruction seen in Gaza can be repeated in Lebanon if conflict breaks out.
Hezbollah, in the meantime, is way extra highly effective than Hamas and believed to have an unlimited arsenal of rockets and missiles able to hanging wherever in Israel.
Kassem mentioned he would not consider that Israel has the flexibility or has decided to launch a conflict at current. He warned that even when Israel intends to launch a restricted operation in Lebanon that stops wanting a full-scale conflict, it shouldn’t anticipate the preventing to stay restricted.
“Israel can determine what it needs: restricted conflict, whole conflict, partial conflict,” he mentioned. “Nevertheless it ought to anticipate that our response and our resistance won’t be inside a ceiling and guidelines of engagement set by Israel… If Israel wages the conflict, it means it doesn’t management its extent or who enters into it.”
The latter was an obvious reference to Hezbollah’s allies within the Iran-backed so-called “axis of resistance” within the area. Armed teams in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere – and, doubtlessly, Iran itself – may enter the fray within the occasion of a full-scale conflict in Lebanon, which could additionally pull in Israel’s strongest ally, the USA.
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Related Press writers Kareem Chehayeb and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.
