Lebanese Forces (LF) leader Samir Geagea at a dinner in Maarab, Dec. 28, 2024. (Credit: @DrSamirGeagea/X)
Lebanese Forces (LF) leader Samir Geagea said on Saturday evening that enforcing the cease-fire agreement was a “responsibility of the outgoing government” of Najib Mikati, which should “order the army” to retake the strategic Wadi Hujeir valley, or instruct diplomacy to “take the necessary initiatives.”
Since the start of the 60-day truce between Hezbollah and the Israeli army on Nov. 27, Israel has continued to strike regularly in southern Lebanon, killing at least 36 people, destroying homes and advancing into areas it had failed to take before the cease-fire. Wadi Hujeir, which links several regions in the South, is one such strategic location, and the Israeli army advanced there on Thursday, provoking widespread indignation in Lebanon, before withdrawing the same day.
At a dinner in Maarab, the headquarters of the LF, Geagea asserted that “the cease-fire agreement is the responsibility of the current government, and it is up to it to take the necessary measures for its application.” “Some Hezbollah MPs claim that the sovereignists [political formations opposed to the Shiite party] have remained silent" in the face of Israeli violations. But, in his view, it is Hezbollah itself that “currently controls the cabinet.”
Deadlock
“Therefore, let them do what needs to be done, let them order the army to launch an offensive to retake Wadi Hujeir, for example, or instruct the Foreign Ministry to act by drafting petitions and taking the necessary initiatives.” “All they do is talk and blame the opposition,” he said, denouncing the Shiite party's "intolerable hypocrisy." “They claim that the state is not doing its job, when in fact they embody the state. Let them take the necessary measures,” said Geagea.
Hezbollah officials, including members of parliament and ministers such as Transport Minister Ali Hamieh, have recently denounced Israeli violations and argued that the state and the international community are not doing enough to counter them, in a bid to justify the arming of the Shiite party. After Thursday's advance into Wadi Hujeir, Hamieh stressed that “the only alternative is resistance.”
For the Maronite leader, “there is no way out other than the full application of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701,” on which the cease-fire agreement is based, and which stipulates that only the army and the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) should be deployed in the south, and not Hezbollah.
Geagea continued, “From the outset, we warned that the war of support” in Gaza, launched on Oct. 8, 2023 by Hezbollah, which fired shells into Israel the day after the Hamas attack and the start of the Israeli offensive on the Palestinian enclave, “would lead to the current impasse.” "This is not a game; the fate of an entire people is at stake,” he said.
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