Hezbollah lawmaker warns of Lebanese ‘internal conflict’ after Israel deal

BEIRUT: Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah warned on Sunday of “internal conflict” in Lebanon over the country’s agreement with Israel, which the Iran-backed militant group rejects, predicting that the deal would not be implemented.

The agreement, which was signed in Washington on Friday after five rounds of talks and aims to pave the way to peace between the neighbours, includes plans to disarm Hezbollah.

Fadlallah spoke a day after Lebanese President Joseph Aoun told US President Donald Trump in a phone call that the Lebanese state “will assume its responsibilities” in implementing the framework agreement.

Hezbollah’s leader Naim Qassem had said on Saturday that the group would treat the deal as “null and void” and described it as “a surrender of sovereignty”.

Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the wider Middle East war in March with rocket fire aimed at Israel to avenge the killing of Iran’s supreme leader in US-Israeli strikes, and Israel responded with heavy airstrikes and a ground invasion.

On Sunday, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported a new attack on the country’s south, saying “an Israeli warplane carried out an airstrike targeting the outskirts of the towns of Deir Seryan and Taybeh”.

State media had also reported Israeli airstrikes on the south on Saturday, and the Lebanese health ministry said one person was killed in an attack on the town of Nabatieh al-Fawqa that day.

The Israeli military said it had struck Hezbollah militants after detecting them in the area of Nabatieh, adding that its troops had also “struck and dismantled a Hezbollah rocket launcher that posed a threat to them”.

Speaking at a memorial ceremony, Fadlallah said: “The agreement of humiliation and disgrace signed by the authorities will never see the light of day and will not be implemented.”

“Our finger will remain on the trigger, we will continue our path of resistance to achieve our objectives, and we will exercise our legitimate right to defend our people,” he said.

He added that what “the authorities have done amounts to sedition aimed at pushing the country into chaos and shifting the conflict from one with the enemy to an internal conflict”.

According to the text of the deal shared by the US state department, Lebanon and Israel, officially at war for decades, expressed their intent to “conclusively end the conflict, address its underlying causes and therewith formally conclude any state of war between them”.

The agreement sets up a process during which Lebanon’s military is due to “restore effective sovereign authority over all Lebanese territory, pending the verified disarmament of non-state armed groups”.

Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz, however, has insisted its troops would be able to stay in Lebanon so long as Hezbollah remained armed.