Hezbollah rejects Israel and Lebanon’s ceasefire plan

Hezbollah leader insists that a ceasefire must include southern Lebanon, where Israel ‌has ‌seized a self-declared security zone

Hezbollah rejected a ceasefire plan agreed by the Lebanese and Israeli governments in US-mediated talks, as Israel kept up strikes in southern Lebanon on Thursday and said it would not be withdrawing from the south.

Israel and Lebanon agreed to implement a ceasefire but said it would require a “complete cessation” of fire by Iran-backed Hezbollah, according to a joint statement after US-led talks in Washington on Wednesday.

The two sides, which do not have formal diplomatic relations, also agreed to create “pilot zones” in which the Lebanese armed forces “will take exclusive control of the territory to the exclusion of all non-state actors”.

The development came despite continued cross-border attacks earlier in the day.

The joint statement said the ceasefire was “contingent on a complete cessation” of fire by Hezbollah as well as evacuation of the group’s operatives from southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem, whose Lebanese Shi’ite Muslim group is not a party to the talks, said the negotiations were shameless, rejecting the Washington declaration as “a ⁠roadmap for the annihilation of a section of the Lebanese people and the enslavement of the rest”.