Lebanese Foreign Minister Joe Rajji. (Credit: AFP)
BEIRUT — ''Direct negotiations'' between the Lebanese government and Israel are ''the only way'' to restore peace in Lebanon, the Lebanese foreign minister said during a hearing before the French National Assembly, AFP reports.
''Hezbollah is doing everything it can to prevent these direct negotiations,'' Joe Rajji said before the Foreign Affairs Committee. ''But for the Lebanese state, for the government, this is the only path to try to resolve the issue as a whole,'' he added, calling for pragmatism and stressing that the military option had ''proven ineffective.''
''The so-called resistance led by Hezbollah has neither liberated Jerusalem nor saved Gaza, and has not even been able to defend Lebanon,'' the Lebanese minister also said. ''On the contrary, it has plunged us into more violence and more [Israeli] occupation.''
He further described Hezbollah’s claim of defending ''the country against invasion and Israeli occupation'' as ''absurd,'' noting that Israel has stated it has ''no territorial ambitions in Lebanon.''
