BEIRUT\/JERUSALEM
\nHezbollah rejected a ceasefire plan agreed by the Lebanese and Israeli governments in U.S.-mediated talks, as Israel kept up strikes in \u200bsouthern Lebanon on Thursday and said it wouldn\u2019t be withdrawing from the south.
\nThe United States announced on Wednesday that Lebanon and Israel had agreed to implement a ceasefire \u200ccontingent on Iran-backed Hezbollah ceasing fire and evacuating its fighters from areas of southern Lebanon near the border.
\nHezbollah leader Naim Qassem, whose Lebanese Shi\u2019ite Muslim group is not a party to the talks, said the negotiations were shameless, rejecting the Washington declaration as \u201ca roadmap for the annihilation of a section of the Lebanese people and the enslavement of the rest.\u201d
\n\u201cAs long as the occupation exists, the resistance will continue,\u201d he said in a written statement.
\nHostilities between Hezbollah and Israel \u200breignited on March 2, when the group opened fire in support of Tehran as it came under U.S.-Israeli attack. The war has ground on despite several ceasefires declared from Washington \u200bsince April.
\nThe war has become a sticking point in diplomacy towards resolving the regional conflict. Tehran has demanded an end to Israeli attacks in Lebanon as part of any deal.
\nQassem said a ceasefire must include southern Lebanon, where Israel has seized a self-declared security zone, which it says aims to shield northern Israel from Hezbollah attack.<\/p>\n
Israel keeps up strikes
\nIsraeli Defence Minister Israel Katz earlier on Thursday said Israel \u201cwill, for the time being, continue its fire and operations on the ground\u201d. The Israeli military, in a warning to residents of the south, said it was continuing to target Hezbollah facilities.
\nKatz said Israel would continue to \u201cdismantle terrorist infrastructure in the area\u201d and had \u201cfreedom \u200bof action, backed by the U.S., to strike in Beirut in response to attacks on Israeli communities and territory\u201d.
\nIsrael carried out numerous airstrikes in southern Lebanon, security sources said. Lebanon\u2019s National News Agency reported \u200bfive people killed in airstrikes in the town of Sohmor. A drone buzzed over Beirut.
\nLebanese President Joseph Aoun said Washington\u2019s ceasefire framework was \u201ca final opportunity to secure a comprehensive and permanent ceasefire\u201d. Speaking before Qassem\u2019s statement, Aoun \u200csaid the ceasefire could come into force within a day if all parties approved, in an apparent reference to Hezbollah.
\nThe statement released by the U.S. State Department said the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire was contingent on Hezbollah completely halting fire and the evacuation of all its operatives from the area between the border and the Litani River.
\nIt made no reference to any Israeli withdrawal from the south.
\nKatz said Israeli forces would remain in the security zone, including the area of Beaufort castle, seized by Israeli forces at the weekend, \u201cand without the return of the population\u201d.<\/p>\n
Lebanese army to control \u2018pilot zones\u2019
\nThe joint statement said Lebanon and Israel agreed \u201cto swiftly advance the creation of pilot zones in which the Lebanese Armed Forces will take exclusive control of the territory to the exclusion of all non-state actors\u201d.
\nLebanese troops deployed into the south as part of a November 2024 ceasefire to end the last Hezbollah-Israel war, \u200band declared in January that they had established control over the area between the border and the Litani.
\nThe Lebanese government has proposed one such \u200bzone in the area of Beaufort castle as a model that could be rolled out elsewhere, a Lebanese official said.
\nAoun, a Maronite Christian, and Lebanon\u2019s Sunni Muslim Prime Minister Nawaf Salam have been seeking Hezbollah\u2019s peaceful disarmament for a year, fuelling tension with the group.
\nIsrael\u2019s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called the ceasefire a \u201cserious mistake\u201d and called for a cabinet vote.
\nBen-Gvir said that Hezbollah would not withdraw its fighters from the area south of the Litani River and that \u200bthe Lebanese army was incapable of forcing Hezbollah to comply.
\nNetanyahu has come under pressure from political opponents, and some allies, \u200bwho say he has ceded sovereignty in yielding to the U.S.
\nA U.N. peacekeeper in Lebanon died on Thursday from wounds sustained when mortar shells hit his position near Marjayoun in southeastern Lebanon late the previous night, the U.N. peacekeeping mission UNIFIL \u200bsaid.
\nAdditional reporting by Alexander Cornwell in Jerusalem, Tom Perry and Maya Gebeily in Beirut, Ahmed Elimam and Jana Choukeir in Dubai; Writing by Alexander Cornwell and Tom Perry; Editing by Sharon Singleton and Peter Graff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIRUT\/JERUSALEM Hezbollah rejected a ceasefire plan agreed by the Lebanese and Israeli governments in U.S.-mediated talks, as Israel kept up strikes in \u200bsouthern Lebanon on Thursday and said it wouldn\u2019t be withdrawing from the south. The United States announced on Wednesday that Lebanon and Israel had agreed to implement a ceasefire \u200ccontingent on Iran-backed Hezbollah …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":98612,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98627"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98641,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98627\/revisions\/98641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}