Lebanon’s cabinet convened again on Thursday to discuss the thorny task of disarming Hezbollah, a day after the Iran-backed group rejected the government’s decision to take away its weapons.
With Washington pressing Lebanon to take action on the matter, US envoy Tom Barrack has made several visits to Beirut in recent weeks, presenting officials with a proposal that includes a timetable for Hezbollah’s disarmament.
Amid the US prodding and fears that Israel could expand its strikes in Lebanon, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Tuesday that the government had tasked the military with developing a plan to restrict arms to state forces by the end of 2025.
The decision is unprecedented since the end of Lebanon’s civil war more than three decades ago, when the country’s armed factions — with the exception of Hezbollah — agreed to surrender their weapons.
As Thursday’s cabinet meeting got underway, Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc called on the government to “correct the situation it has put itself and Lebanon in by slipping into accepting American demands that inevitably serve the interests of the Zionist enemy”.
The government has said the new disarmament push is part of implementing a November ceasefire that sought to end more than a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah.
That conflict culminated last year in two months of full-blown war that left the group badly weakened.
Hezbollah said on Wednesday that it would treat the government’s decision to disarm it “as if it did not exist”, accusing the cabinet of committing a “grave sin”.
– ‘Never come to fruition’ –
Iran backs the group militarily and financially, with a member of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps expressing scepticism at the “American-Zionist plan” for Hezbollah’s disarmament.
“In my opinion, it will never come to fruition,” said deputy coordinator Iraj Masjedi of the Guards’ Quds Force, its foreign operations arm.
Citing “political sources”, pro-Hezbollah newspaper Al Akhbar said the group and its ally the Amal movement could choose to withdraw their four ministers from the government or trigger a no-confidence vote by parliament’s Shiite bloc, which comprises 27 of Lebanon’s 128 lawmakers.
Israel — which routinely carries out air strikes in Lebanon despite the November ceasefire — has already signalled it would not hesitate to launch destructive military operations if Beirut failed to disarm the group.
Israeli strikes in south Lebanon killed two people on Wednesday, according to the health ministry.
Under the truce, Israel was meant to completely withdraw from Lebanon, though it has kept forces in several areas it deems strategic.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, was to pull its fighters north of the Litani River, around 30 kilometres (20 miles) north of the border with Israel, to be replaced by the expanded deployment of the Lebanese army and United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said on Thursday that peacekeepers “discovered a vast network of fortified tunnels in the vicinity of Tayr Harfa, Zibqin, and Naqura”, including “several bunkers, artillery pieces, multiple rocket launchers, hundreds of shells and rockets, anti-tank mines, and other explosive devices”.
Prime Minister Salam said in June that the Lebanese army had dismantled more than 500 Hezbollah military positions and weapons depots in the south.
nad-lar/smw
© Agence France-Presse
