Lebanese government must disarm Hezbollah, Israel says
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the Lebanese government must fulfill its commitment to disarm Hezbollah and remove it from southern Lebanon as Israel continues to intermittently attack the group in the south of the country.
The Israeli army said on Sunday that it had killed four members of Hezbollah.
The United States brokered a ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel in November 2024 after more than a year of conflict sparked by the war in Gaza, but Israeli cross-border attacks continued sporadically.
Katz also said maximum enforcement efforts will continue and intensify to protect Israelis in the north.
Under the November 2024 ceasefire that ended more than a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, Lebanon agreed that only state security forces would carry weapons in the country.
This would mean the complete disarmament of Hezbollah.
Since then, Lebanon has been under pressure from the United States, Saudi Arabia and Hezbollah’s internal rivals to disarm the group.
Lebanese army sources told Reuters that Hezbollah had blown up so many weapons depots that they had run out of explosives but had to walk a careful tightrope to avoid flaring tensions within the country.
Hezbollah, once Lebanon’s dominant political party, has been severely weakened by Israel’s war in 2024; this war killed thousands of fighters and longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah.
The war also killed more than 1,100 women and children and destroyed much of southern and eastern Lebanon.
Hezbollah has publicly committed to a ceasefire and has not opposed the seizure of unmanned weapons depots in the south and has not opened fire on Israel since the November ceasefire.
However, as stated in the text, he insisted that disarmament only applied to southern Lebanon and implied that conflict was possible if the state took action against the group.
