Hezbollah says will accept any Hamas truce decision, abide by ceasefire

Beirut, Lebanon – AFP

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said Wednesday his group would accept Palestinian ally Hamas’s decision on Gaza truce negotiations, repeating that his movement would stop cross-border attacks on Israel if a cease-fire were reached.

Hezbollah has traded almost daily fire with Israeli forces in support of Hamas since the early October last year.

“Hamas is negotiating… on behalf of the whole axis of resistance,” Nasrallah said, referring to regional pro-Iran groups opposed to Israel and the United States.

“Whatever Hamas accepts, everyone accepts and is satisfied with,” he said, adding: “We do not ask (Hamas) to coordinate with us because the battle in the first instance is theirs.”

Nasrallah’s remarks came days after he met with a Hamas delegation headed by foreign relations chief Khalil al-Hayya.

Hamas has signalled that it would drop its insistence on a “complete” cease-fire — which Israel has repeatedly rejected — as a condition for starting truce talks.

Nasrallah repeated his position that “if a cease-fire is reached, and we all hope for that… our front will cease fire without any discussion”.

“That is a commitment, because it is a support front and we have been clear (about this) from the start,” he said, during a televised address commemorating a senior Hezbollah commander killed in an Israeli strike last week.

However, Nasrallah warned that “we will never allow any attack that the Israeli enemy might carry out against Lebanon (even) if there is a cease-fire in Gaza”.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Sunday that “we will continue fighting and doing everything necessary to bring about the desired result” in the campaign against Hezbollah, “even if there is a cease-fire” in the Gaza Strip.

In Lebanon, Israel’s attacks have killed nearly 500 people since early October, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, at least 29 people have been killed, the majority of them soldiers, according to the authorities.

Nasrallah said Israeli demands to push Hezbollah back from the border “won’t fix” the situation for Israel.

His group’s launching of “hundreds of rockets and dozens of drones in a single day” towards Israeli targets was a message “that Hezbollah doesn’t fear war”, he added.