Lebanon\u2019s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said he would like to see the current United States administration put pressure on Israel to withdraw from five locations in southern Lebanon. <\/p>\n
A US-mediated agreement in November last year paused months of fighting between the Israeli military and Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed militant group that operates in Lebanon. Israel has significantly weakened Hezbollah over the past year, killing much of its top leadership and severely degrading its power through mass airstrikes. <\/p>\n
The prime minister said Lebanon has been honoring its commitments to the November agreement and that the Lebanese military is \u201cconsolidating control\u201d over the south of the country and its borders. <\/p>\n
Hezbollah is committed to an agreement that affirms that the Lebanese military is the only authority allowed to bear arms, Salam said Wednesday. However, \u201cIsrael has not honored its commitments,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
\u201cIsrael\u2019s argument is as follows\u2026 they need to be in these five points in order to have a better monitoring of the situation in southern Lebanon\u2026 but we are not in World War One\u2026we are in the age of satellite imagery, of drones with cameras. They have balloons monitoring the region, let alone a network of spies operating on the ground,\u201d Salam said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIsrael\u2019s presence is politically counterproductive. It\u2019s undermining my government\u2026we want Israel out yesterday, not tomorrow.\u201d <\/p>\n
Despite agreeing to withdraw from Lebanese territory as part of the US-mediated agreement, Israel has said that the Lebanese army has yet to take control of a region with Hezbollah presence. Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, said in March that the Israeli military would remain in these five points \u201cindefinitely, to protect the residents of the north \u2013 regardless of any future negotiations.\u201d <\/p>\n
Along with the United States, France and the United Nations are monitoring the ceasefire. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure they can testify that Lebanon has been honoring its commitments while Israel has not honored its commitments,\u201d Salam said on the mediating countries. <\/p>\n
Salam, who rose to prominence after presiding over the International Court of Justice during South Africa\u2019s genocide case against Israel, was designated Lebanon\u2019s prime minister in January in a surprise move that was seen as a blow to Hezbollah and its allies. <\/p>\n
Widely seen as a reformist, the prime minister declared specific priorities for his mandate, including ending institutional corruption and regaining sovereignty over his country by disarming Hezbollah and Palestinian factions. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe goal\u2026 is that the state should have exclusive monopoly over arms, over all its territory,\u201d he said in the interview. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Lebanon\u2019s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said he would like to see the current United States administration put pressure on Israel to withdraw from five locations in southern Lebanon. A US-mediated agreement in November last year paused months of fighting between the Israeli military and Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed militant group that operates in Lebanon. Israel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}