Key Points
- Joseph Aoun asks Israel to withdraw from the five points
- Expresses hope for peaceful ties with Israel in future
- Hezbollah refuses to surrender
BEIRUT: Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Friday ruled out the possibility of normalising relations with Israel, while expressing hope for peaceful coexistence with the country’s southern neighbor, which continues to occupy parts of southern Lebanon.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar’s in a statement last week, expressed his country’s interest in normalising ties with Lebanon and Syria.
Aoun “distinguished between peace and normalisation,” according to a statement shared by the presidency.
“Peace is the lack of a state of war, and this is what matters to us in Lebanon at the moment. As for the issue of normalisation, it is not currently part of Lebanese foreign policy,” the president said in front of a delegation from an Arab think tank.
President Aoun urged Israel to withdraw from five border points it continues to occupy, emphasising that full withdrawal was mandated under the November ceasefire aimed at ending its conflict with Hezbollah.
He stated that the presence of Israeli troops in Lebanese territory “obstructs the full deployment of the Lebanese army up to the internationally recognised borders.”
Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem on Sunday said that his group will neither surrender nor disarm in response to Israeli threats, rejecting ongoing pressure to lay down its weapons.
“This threat will not make us accept surrender,” Qassem said in a televised speech to thousands of his supporters in the southern suburbs of Beirut on the day of Ashura.
Under the terms of the ceasefire agreement, Hezbollah is required to withdraw its fighters to positions north of the Litani River, approximately 30 kilometers from the Israeli border.
Israel, in turn, was expected to pull its forces out of all Lebanese territory but has maintained a presence at five locations it considers strategically important.
Israel launched a wide-scale assault on Lebanon on Oct. 8, 2023, that escalated into a full-scale war by Sept. 23, 2024. The conflict has killed more than 4,000 people, wounded over 17,000, and displaced nearly 1.4 million, according to official data.
