BEIRUT: Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Monday said Israel’s withdrawal from the country’s south was a “non-negotiable” demand that authorities would pursue through negotiations, days ahead of a new round of talks in Washington.
In a statement commemorating Israel’s previous withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 after some two decades of occupation, Aoun said that “this year, the anniversary of the liberation comes as Lebanon is weighed down by a painful reality.”
“Israeli attacks have not stopped, and our dear southern villages are still suffering under a renewed occupation,” he said.
Israeli troops who invaded Lebanon during the latest war with Hezbollah began on March 2 are operating inside a self-declared “yellow line” running around 10 km deep inside Lebanese territory.
Israel’s military has also been conducting heavy strikes well beyond that area despite a ceasefire supposed to be in force since April 17.
“Lebanon will not accept this reality,” Aoun said.
“The path to a full Israeli withdrawal will remain an uncompromised, constant national demand that the Lebanese state works to achieve through the option of negotiations,” he added.
Lebanon and Israel began landmark US-brokered talks last month and are preparing for a fourth round in early June, preceded by a meeting between military delegations at the Pentagon on May 29.
Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem on Sunday reiterated his opposition to the direct talks with Israel and his group’s refusal to disarm, as it keeps up attacks on Israeli targets in south Lebanon and across the border.
“If this government is incapable of guaranteeing sovereignty, it should go,” Qassem said, adding: “Where is the sovereignty if America runs the cogs of the Lebanese state?“
Aoun said that negotiations were “neither a concession nor a surrender.”
“The liberation of the south is a duty borne by the state with the support of its people,” the president added.
Lebanese authorities have committed to disarming Hezbollah, and they prohibited its military activities after it drew Lebanon into the Middle East war with rocket fire at Israel, in retaliation for strikes that killed Iran’s supreme leader.
Israel’s military warned residents of 10 villages, most of them in southern Lebanon, on Monday to evacuate their homes ahead of expected strikes against alleged Hezbollah targets.
“In light of Hezbollah’s violation of the ceasefire agreement, the Israel Defense Forces are compelled to operate against it with force,” the military’s Arabic-language spokesman, Col. Avichay Adraee, said in a social media post, listing the names of the villages.
“For your safety, you must evacuate your homes immediately and move at least 1,000 meters away from these towns and villages to open areas.”
Later on Monday, Adraee issued another evacuation warning directed at residents of a building in Rashidiyeh and two buildings in Burj Al-Shamali, near the city of Tyre.
“We urge residents of the building marked in red on the attached map, as well as nearby buildings: you are located near a facility used by the Hezbollah terrorist organization,” he wrote on X.
“For your safety, you must evacuate immediately and move at least 300 meters away.”
On Sunday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned what he called Hezbollah’s “reckless call to overthrow Lebanon’s democratically elected government,” accusing it of “actively trying to drag Lebanon back into chaos and destruction.”
