The leader of Hezbollah rejected a US-brokered ceasefire agreement reached by Israel and the Lebanese government, leaving the truce in doubt barely a day after it was announced in Washington. In a statement read on the group's Al-Manar television, Naim Qassem said the deal's central demand, that Hezbollah's fighters pull back from the area south of the Litani River, would mean 'surrender, defeat and achieving the enemy's goals.'
Israel and Lebanon had agreed to a full ceasefire on Wednesday, conditioned on Hezbollah halting its attacks and withdrawing its operatives from the zone between the Israeli border and the Litani, a strip that has been the focus of repeated Israeli ground incursions and air strikes. The Lebanese state signed on, but the agreement always depended on the assent of the Iran-backed movement, which fields the most powerful armed force in the country.
Mr Qassem said any ceasefire would have to include a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon, and he pledged that the group would keep fighting as long as Israeli troops occupied Lebanese territory. The group had earlier signalled it might accept a full ceasefire, making the reversal a setback for mediators who had presented the deal as a breakthrough.
The rejection means the agreement risks remaining, in the words of analysts following the talks, a ceasefire that exists only on paper. Without Hezbollah's compliance, Israel is unlikely to halt operations it says are aimed at the group's infrastructure, and the cross-border violence that has displaced tens of thousands on both sides could continue.
Even as the diplomatic effort faltered, Israeli strikes on southern Lebanese towns killed at least five people, including a child, and wounded dozens more, according to Lebanese officials. The casualties highlighted the human cost of a conflict that has run in parallel with the wider US-Iran war, which Tehran has cited as justification for its own strikes in the Gulf.
The standoff places the Lebanese government in a familiar bind, having committed to a ceasefire it cannot enforce against an armed movement more powerful than the state's own forces. For Washington, which has tried to package a Lebanon truce as part of a broader de-escalation, Hezbollah's refusal complicates an already fragile diplomatic track.