🇱🇧 Statements by Hezbollah's Deputy Secretary General, Naim Qassem:
🇮🇱 Israel wants to use Lebanon to resettle Palestinians, and its goal in disarming Hezbollah is to neutralize Lebanon’s strength.
🤝 We are giving diplomacy a chance, but this period won’t last long. We have options, we fear nothing—try us if you want, no one can defeat us.
🛡️ Some claim the resistance’s arms are an obstacle to building the state and should be taken by force if not surrendered. But taking weapons by force would serve the enemy—this sedition will not happen.
✋ We will confront anyone who attacks the resistance or seeks to disarm it, just as we confronted Israel. We will not allow anyone to take Hezbollah’s arms.
📍 The ceasefire agreement applies exclusively to areas south of the Litani River. We fulfilled our obligations, as did the state, but Israel did not.
🧭 The only path for our participation in implementing Resolution 1701 is dialogue under national principles: protecting Lebanon’s sovereignty, liberating its land, halting all forms of aggression, and using the strength of the resistance and its arms in a defensive strategy that achieves both liberation and protection.
🏗️ I call on the Lebanese government to place the issue of reconstruction on its agenda. The defensive strategy does not mean disarming.
