Hezbollah chief makes overtures to Saudi Arabia for front against Israel
BEYRUT (Reuters) – Hezbollah Chief Naim Qassem called on Saudi Arabia to return a “new page” with Iran -backed group on Friday, and after years of hostility forcing Riyadh’s ties with Lebanon, he called on the past disputes to create a unified façade against Israel.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states appointed a terrorist organization Shiite Hezbollah in 2016. Riyadh, the Lebanese government last year’s war with Israel with the war weakened in a badly weakened group disarmed by pressing the rivals of Washington and Hezbollah in Lebanon joined the rivals.
At an address organized on TV on Friday, Qassem said that regional forces should see Israel as the main threat to the Middle East, not Hezbollah, and that he should propose to “repair relationships” with Riyadh.
“We are sure that the arms of the resistance (Hezbollah) are pointed to the enemy of Israel, not to another place or existence in the world,” Lebanon, Saudi Arabia or any other place in the world. ” He said.
He said that the dialogue “at least at this extraordinary stage will freeze the disagreements of the past, so that we can confront and remove it with Israel” and Hezbollah is “a clear gain for Israel”.
Saudi Arabia once passed in Lebanon billions, deposited money to the Central Bank and helped to rebuild the south after the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel – to see that the group was stronger with the help of Iran in Lebanon and the region.
In 2021, when Sunni Saudi Arabia fired the Ambassador of Lebanon, remembered its own ambassador and banned Lebanese imports, relations were sharply supported. Saudi said that Hezbollah had controlled the decision -making processes of the Lebanese state at that time.
Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah called Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman as a “terrorist” and has repeatedly criticized Saudi’s role in Yemen.
However, in recent months, seismic political changes in the region, Israel hit Hezbollah last year and kills Nasrallah, and the rebels of the group of Syrian ally Bashar Assad in December.
(Reporting by Laila Bassam and Maya Gebeily; Writing by Enas Alashray; Alex Richardson, Aidan Lewis)
