UNSC delegation meets Lebanon’s Aoun, tours south amid Israeli escalation

A day after a wave of Israeli raids rocked the south of Lebanon, President Joseph Aoun reported to have met with a delegation from the UN Security Council (UNSC) to discuss the rising tensions with Israel and efforts to disarm Hezbollah.

Aoun urged the UNSC team to press Israel to abide by a ceasefire that it had violated almost daily on November 2024 and to leave southern Lebanon.

In remarks made by the NNA, Aoun said, “We look forward to pressure from your side.”

Aoun previously stated that the UN delegation would travel to southern Lebanon to check “the situation on the ground,” which included meetings with prime minister Nawaf Salam and parliament speaker Nabih Berri. According to Aoun, the trip would allow the delegation to “see the real picture of what is happening there” as the army implements a plan to destroy Hezbollah’s weapons.

Hezbollah is angered by the UN’s visit, which comes amid flimsy indications of potential deeper ties between Lebanon and Israel.

Hezbollah’s chief Naim Qassem criticized the two states’ first direct discussions on Wednesday as a “free concession” to Israel, which Lebanon technically is still at war with.

Qassem claimed that the civilian-led discussions violate the Lebanese government’s policy, which should be ensuring state sovereignty, in comments made by the pro-Hezbollah Al-Akhbar newspaper.

Qassem called Israel an “expansionist” and claimed that it had carried out “constant” attacks and refused to abide by the ceasefire agreement signed last year with Hezbollah.

Qassem stated that the US has no business interfering with internal Lebanese issues, including the country’s defense strategy or Hezbollah’s efforts to disarm the country. “This aggression is not due to Hezbollah’s weapons, but rather aims to gradually occupy Lebanon and establish a “Great Israel” through Lebanon,” Qassem continued.

Salam, for his part, defended the “positive” discussions with Israel, which were held during a meeting of the military committee monitoring their ceasefire, saying they were only concerned with putting the 2024 truce into effect.

Negotiations are “under fire,” right?

Israel’s military continued the negotiations with additional attacks in southern Lebanon despite the apparent diplomatic opening. It launched its latest of hundreds of attacks on southern Lebanese villages on Thursday, breaking the 2024 truce and causing the deaths of dozens of civilians and destroying important infrastructure, all of which were attributed to Hezbollah.

Zeina Khodr, a correspondent for Al Jazeera in Beirut, claimed that the strikes “will continue until Hezbollah is completely disarmed.”

Hezbollah has publicly resisted disarming it, but the organization has continued to bombard and occupy Lebanon.

Qassem asserted in recent days that the armed group has the authority to respond to the country’s top military official’s assassination last month in a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Hezbollah has “the right to respond, and we will determine the timing for that,” according to Qassem, calling Haytham Ali Tabatabai’s killing “a blatant aggression and a heinous crime.”

The “language of negotiation”

The government’s negotiations with Israel, which are scheduled to resume on December 19, are seen by Aoun’s Information Minister Paul Morcos as the only way to progress, according to Morcos. There is negotiation as the only option. At a cabinet meeting, Aoun, a former commander of the Lebanese army, said, “This is the reality, and this is what history has taught us about wars,” Morcos claimed.

There would be no concession to Lebanon’s sovereignty, according to Morcos, and Aoun stressed the necessity for “the language of negotiation, not the language of war,” to prevail.

Lebanon was tasked with putting an end to armed groups’ hostilities in the wake of the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon in November 2024, with Lebanon tasked with putting an end to Israeli military action.

Despite the terms of the agreement, Israeli forces are still occupying at least five positions in Lebanese territory and have not withdrawn. More than 300 people have been killed in near-daily attacks across Lebanon, including at least 127 civilians, according to the UN.

Source: Aljazeera