The Secretary General of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem. (Credit: Screenshot of his televised address broadcast by Al Manar)
BEIRUT — Naim Qassem called on Monday for Lebanese authorities to cancel planned talks with Israel, describing them as “submission and capitulation,” ahead of a Tuesday preparatory meeting in Washington between the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors.
Israel agreed on April 9 to enter direct negotiations with Lebanon at its request, amid ongoing Israeli military strikes.
“We refuse negotiations with the occupying entity,” the Hezbollah leader stated, considering that they “are futile.” He denounced a “series of free concessions,” believing that Lebanese authorities have no cards in their hands. “It is submission and capitulation, and we call for a heroic position to cancel these negotiations,” said Qassem in a televised speech apparently recorded and broadcast by the party’s channel Al-Manar, unlike his latest interventions which had been delivered through written statements.
Qassem stated that Hezbollah has for its part “chosen confrontation to defend Lebanon and its people.” “We are engaged in this battle because we are targeted existentially, because our country is targeted by the Greater Israel project, and because our independence is threatened. We have therefore decided to choose confrontation and resistance to defend Lebanon and its people,” he said, insisting that the ongoing Israeli aggression is “not a simple battle for the security of the North [of Israel], but an aggression aimed at swallowing Lebanon, destroying its strength, its people and its resistance.”
In this context, “the Lebanese state is supposed to defend itself and assign its army and forces to face the attack, because all of Lebanon is targeted,” he said, accusing the authorities of being nothing more than “a tool serving Israel.”
Reacting to this speech, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz replied: “What Hassan Nasrallah understood in his last hour, Qassem will soon understand,” referring to the assassination of the former Hezbollah Secretary-General, killed on Sept. 27, 2024, by massive Israeli strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut.
'Until the last breath'
Qassem assured that Hezbollah “will remain on the ground until the last breath,” rejecting any surrender. “Let the officials think about how to confront the aggression by various means,” he said. “If someone is thinking about surrender, let them go surrender alone; we will not surrender and we will remain on the ground until the last breath.”
“We will confront and we want what is right, and we will present to the world a model showing that Lebanon, through its army, its people, and its resistance, is untouchable in the face of the enemy,” he insisted, stating that it is indeed “a war of Lebanon against the Israeli-American enemy, not the wars of others.”
These remarks were mocked on X by the Arabic-speaking spokesperson of the Israeli army, Avichay Adraee, who shared a video of an alleged Hezbollah fighter killed in a drone strike.
The Hezbollah leader also addressed Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, denouncing “the pressure [American-Israeli] exerted on them to confront their own people.”
“Let us face the aggression together, then we will discuss the future and everything else,” he told them, while stating that “the resistance has chosen not to surrender, the field will decide.”
Qassem further accused the Lebanese government of “stabbing the resistance in the back.”
Returning to the March 2 Cabinet decision declaring Hezbollah’s military activities illegal, he said that “this criminalization is a serious mistake,” and called on the government to “reconsider this decision, which requires national consensus.”
“You do not fight and you do not allow anyone to fight,” he told the authorities, denouncing “a disengagement from the resistance and hostility toward it, while they should support it and benefit from its capabilities.”
Regarding the army, which the government of Nawaf Salam had tasked with disarming Hezbollah, he said that it “is aware, and cannot be drawn into a logic of strife, just as the resistance cannot be drawn into a logic of strife.”
Threatened with the loss of its arsenal, Hezbollah has repeatedly raised the specter of internal strife and civil war. On Monday, Lebanon marked the 51st anniversary of the beginning of the civil war, on April 13, 1975, which devastated the country for fifteen years and divided the Lebanese.
In his speech, Qassem also criticized Israel and the United States. They have “clearly declared that they want to strengthen the army in order to disarm Hezbollah and fight it, and that they want the state to dismantle the party’s institutions and end the resistance and its supporters,” he said, denouncing the Israeli-American desire to “support the army only to the extent that it is capable of fighting its own people, which the army cannot do.”
On March 2, Hezbollah pushed Lebanon into a new escalation, following the Israeli-American attack on Iran, by firing rockets at Israel. The Israeli response was immediate.
The country has since recorded more than 2,089 dead and 6,762 injured, including 166 children killed and 648 injured. There are also 88 dead and 195 injured among medical personnel, according to the latest figures published Monday by the Ministry of Health.
