BEIRUT
\nA Hezbollah lawmaker said Sunday that the group would be able to \u201cthwart\u201d the objectives of direct negotiations between Lebanon and Israel. Speaking at an event to honor killed Hezbollah fighters, Hassan Fadlallah said \u201cthese negotiations with all their results do not concern us, and we will not implement them.\u201d
\nHezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East war on March 2, when it fired rockets at Israel in support of its backer Iran. Israeli attacks on Lebanon have since killed more than 2,600 people and displaced more than a million.
\n\u201cWe have a free people and a steadfast resistance capable of thwarting all the objectives of these negotiations, which increase the sharp division in the country between the factions of our people and within the state itself,\u201d Fadlallah said. Lebanon and Israel\u2019s US ambassadors have held two meetings in Washington in recent weeks, the first of their kind in decades.
\nThe first meeting led to a pause in fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, while Lebanon and Israel agreed to direct negotiations under pressure from the United States.The two countries have been officially at war since 1948. Hezbollah has strongly rejected the talks, with its leader Naim Qassem calling them a \u201csin.\u201d
\nHe has previously said the negotiations aim to stop the war, secure an Israeli withdrawal from the south, demarcate the border and end the \u201cstate of hostility\u201d with Israel. Fadlallah said \u201cany new agreement that will be established in Lebanon must guarantee that our country will not be attacked in any way.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIRUT A Hezbollah lawmaker said Sunday that the group would be able to \u201cthwart\u201d the objectives of direct negotiations between Lebanon and Israel. Speaking at an event to honor killed Hezbollah fighters, Hassan Fadlallah said \u201cthese negotiations with all their results do not concern us, and we will not implement them.\u201d Hezbollah drew Lebanon into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544518,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-544496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n