Manal Zuaiter – Major General
Hezbollah will not accept turning Dahiya and Beirut into a permissible arena for the Israeli enemy without a response deep within the entity… In all frankness, the party says that it is ready to expand the war, and its targeting of Haifa has established a clear deterrence equation that states that it will not stand idly by, if the enemy decides to go further and return to expanding the circle of fire, but rather will respond with what restrains it from escalation and restores balance to the field… Thus, the party confirms that the equation has become clear: If Beirut and Dahiya return to the circle of targeting, The Israeli depth will in turn return to the circle of fire.
According to the party’s reading, it seems clear that the enemy is seeking to expand the war in Lebanon with clear American cover, and that targeting the suburb is a violation of the path that was agreed upon in Islamabad regarding reducing the escalation in Beirut and the suburb as an entry point to a settlement between Tehran and Washington. Therefore, the party sees that what happened is an attempt to confuse this path, and to impose new rules of engagement outside the framework that has been in place in the south since the ceasefire in mid-April. To clarify, any Targeting within the south of the Litani, or what is known as the yellow zone, was met by Hezbollah with a response inside Lebanese territory to enemy positions or movements. However, when the aggression expanded to the north of the Litani or to areas outside the specified scope of engagement, the response was by targeting settlements in the north of occupied Palestine.
Within this reading, the party considers that the enemy’s expansion of the scope of its aggression, not only on the suburb, but also on the areas north of the Litani, constitutes a violation of the ceasefire agreement and a clear attempt to expand the circle of engagement. Hence, the party believes that it has the right to expand the scope of its response in proportion to the scale of the escalation, as the enemy has no right to expand its attacks, while the resistance remains idly.
On this basis, the party is acting today based on the conviction that its previous commitment to calm during the first days following the ceasefire agreement was aimed at giving an opportunity to the Lebanese parties that claimed to have succeeded in consolidating the agreement. However, neither the state nor Washington was able to prevent the enemy from continuing its aggression… In practice, the enemy never committed to this agreement, but rather moved from aggression against villages within the scope of the southern Litani, or what he calls the yellow zone, to expanding the scope of this aggression to the north of the Litani all the way to the suburb, Contrary to all the American and Lebanese talk that said that Lebanon’s agreement to the path of direct negotiations with the enemy would lead to reducing the escalation in the south, and excluding the suburbs and Beirut from the circle of aggression.
Accordingly, the party is insinuating, in one way or another, that if the countries sponsoring the Islamabad agreement do not intervene to prevent the Israeli enemy from disrupting it, and force it to reduce the escalation, then Lebanon is on the verge of a return to all-out war again, and this statement is consistent with special information obtained by Al-Liwaa, about an “American-Israeli” agreement for a new wave of escalation in Lebanon, within the framework of using the Lebanese arena to pressure the state to engage in direct negotiations with the enemy on the one hand, and to pressure Iran to separate arenas and agree. On American demands on the other hand.
However, the party’s talk about the return of the beating of war drums was met with a remarkable stance towards the President of the Republic, Joseph Aoun, after his new position on the negotiations and meeting with the enemy’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as his position on Iran, where a senior leader in the party told Al-Liwaa: “We hope that the president’s position will be an opportunity to rebuild a unified national approach to the negotiating file, far from any internal division or violation of the principle of national consensus.”
The leader summarized the party’s position on Aoun in a five-point letter addressed to him directly, which was as follows:
First: Emphasizing that any negotiating path with the Israeli enemy must be indirect.
Second: Taking advantage of the elements of the resistance’s strength, its stability, and its ability to deter and inflict pain on the enemy, as an essential factor in any negotiating approach.
Third: We return and reiterate that the “Islamabad” path represents an opportunity for a ceasefire in Lebanon, which requires the First Presidency to take it into consideration and deal with it as a window to a solution.
Fourth: Not to limit Lebanon to the American path only, so that it is alone in confronting the enemy in any negotiations. We return and stress indirectness, but rather to be open to involving multiple international and Arab parties (France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan) at the negotiating table.
Fifth: Listening to the advice of many countries that Lebanon should not officially abandon Islamabad’s path.
