Hezbollah: Fighting with Israel will stop ‘without discussion’ after complete ceasefire in Gaza

Deputy Secretary-General of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, Naim Qassem, said yesterday that the only sure path to a truce on the Israel-Lebanon border is a full ceasefire in Gaza.

Speaking to the Associated Press news agency at the party’s political office in the southern suburb of Beirut, Qassem stressed: “If there is a ceasefire in Gaza, we will stop without any discussion.”

Hezbollah’s participation in the war, he added, has been as a support front for Hamas, and that if the war stopped, the military support would not exist.

However, if Israel scales back its military operations without a formal ceasefire agreement and complete withdrawal from Gaza, the implications for the Israel-Lebanon border conflict are less clear.

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In his 40-minute interview, Qassem stated that “If what happens in Gaza is a mix between ceasefire and no ceasefire, war and no war, we can’t answer [how we would react] now, because we don’t know its shape, its results, its impacts.”

In recent weeks, as Gaza ceasefire talks falter, fears of an escalation between Hezbollah and Israel have increased.

Hezbollah has exchanged almost daily attacks with the Israeli occupation forces along the border over the past nine months. Tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced from border towns on both sides of the border as a result.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday, that Israel is approaching the stage of eliminating the “Hamas army” as part of the ongoing war waged by the occupation army on the Gaza Strip. There have been reports indicating that Israel is preparing to announce the end of its ground military operation that it launched in the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, within days.

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