BEIRUT (AP) — The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah will not abide by any agreement in the United States that could result in direct Lebanon-Israel talks, saying it strongly opposes talks, a senior Hezbollah official said Monday.
Wafiq Safa, a high-ranking member of Hezbollah’s political council, said on the eve of expected talks in Washington between the Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors to the US that for the first time in decades, ambassadors from Lebanon and Israel, who do not have diplomatic ties, would meet face-to-face for face-to-face talks.
“As for the outcome of this negotiation between Lebanon and the Israeli enemy, we are not at all interested or concerned with them,” Safa told The Associated Press.
“We are not bound by what they accept,” he added in a rare interview with international media. He spoke next to a grave as Israeli drones buzzed overhead.
A historic conversation at a sensitive time
Lebanese officials are trying to mediate a cease-fire in the Israel-Hezbollah war at US talks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the goal is the disarmament of Hezbollah and a possible peace deal between Lebanon and Israel. Netanyahu’s spokesman, Shosh Bedrossian, said on Monday that there would be no ceasefire with Hezbollah.
Separately, at last week’s US-Iran peace talks in Pakistan, Iran sought to include Lebanon in its own ceasefire agreement with US-Israel, and the US insisted that Lebanon would not be part of it.
Hours after Tehran and Washington announced a cease-fire last Wednesday, Israel launched more than 100 strikes across Lebanon, including the densely populated residential and commercial areas of central Beirut.
And although US-Iran talks have broken down without a deal, Safa said Hezbollah has been informed that Iran has been “capable of stopping attacks” in the entire administrative region of Beirut, the Lebanese capital, including the southern suburbs of Beirut – a Hezbollah-strong area known as Dahiyah.
Israeli attacks on Beirut and its southern suburbs have halted since Wednesday, but intense fighting continues in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s entry into the war
Israel and Hezbollah have fought several wars since the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group was formed in the 1980s as a guerrilla force fighting Israel’s occupation of what was then southern Lebanon.
The latest phase began on March 2, two days after Israel and the US launched a war on Iran. Hezbollah entered the field by firing missiles at Israel across the border. Israel responded with aerial bombardments and ground attacks.
Since then, the war has displaced more than 1 million people in Lebanon and killed more than 2,000, including more than 500 women, children and medical workers. Many Lebanese blame Hezbollah for dragging Lebanon into the war, and accuse it of acting on behalf of its patron, Iran.
Safa said Hezbollah’s actions were premeditated because its leaders believed that Israel was “preparing a second war with Lebanon” with the aim of destroying Hezbollah.
It was an opportune moment “for Hezbollah … to rebuild a new equation” and restore deterrence against Israel, he said, rejecting any prior agreement with Tehran that Hezbollah would enter the war if Iran attacked.
Following a U.S.-backed cease-fire that halted the last Israel-Hezbollah war in November 2024, Israel continued almost daily strikes in Lebanon to prevent the group from rebuilding. Hezbollah wants to avoid a return to that status quo, Safa said.
“Black Wednesday”
Israel has claimed that more than 250 Hezbollah fighters were killed in the attack on Lebanon last Wednesday. According to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health, more than 100 of the more than 350 people killed were women and children.
That means, according to Israel, every adult male killed that day was a Hezbollah member.
“None of our officers or activists were killed in Beirut,” Safa said. “The dead in Beirut are 100% civilians.” He did not deny that members of the group were killed outside the Lebanese capital.
Israel claimed to have killed Hezbollah leader Naim Qasim’s secretary, along with his nephew Ali Yusuf Harshi and some high-ranking commanders.
Safa says Qasim’s secretary was not killed, although “his relatives may have been.”
After being targeted by two Israeli strikes in Beirut, he confirmed for the first time that he had been wounded in the 2024 Israel-Hezbollah war, saying, “But God let me live.”
Relations with the government deteriorated
Relations between the Lebanese government and Hezbollah – which is not only a militant group but also a political party with a parliamentary bloc – have become increasingly strained.
The government last year approved a plan to remove all weapons that are not state property – its security forces or army – and later said it had completed the work south of the Litani River, where Hezbollah fighters are now fighting Israeli forces.
After March 2, the government proceeded to outlaw Hezbollah’s armed wing.
Safa said that Hezbollah is not currently talking directly to President Joseph Aoun or Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, but all its communications are going through Parliament Speaker Nabih Beri, head of the Hezbollah-affiliated Amal Party.
Safa said that if a cease-fire is reached and Israeli forces withdraw from Lebanon, Hezbollah – which calls itself a “resistance” movement against arch-enemy Israel – is ready to negotiate with the Lebanese government over the fate of its weapons.
“The issue of countermeasures is a Lebanese issue that has nothing to do with Israel or the United States,” he said.
