War between Israel and Hamas: Hezbollah would stop fighting with Israel after ceasefire in Gaza, says deputy leader

BEIRUT (AP) – The deputy leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said Tuesday the only sure path to a ceasefire in Border between Lebanon and Israel is a complete ceasefire in Gaza.

“If there is a … Ceasefire in the Gaza Strip“We will stop without any discussion,” Hezbollah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Kassem said in an interview with the Associated Press at the group’s political office in a southern suburb of Beirut.

Hezbollah’s participation in the War between Israel and Hamas Kassem said Turkey had served as a “support front” for its ally Hamas and “when the war stops, this military support will no longer exist.”

However, if Israel scales back its military operations without a formal ceasefire agreement and a complete withdrawal from Gaza, the consequences for the border conflict between Lebanon and Israel would be less clear, he said.

“If what is happening in Gaza is a mixture of ceasefire and no ceasefire, war and no war, we cannot say now how we would react because we do not know the form, the results and the impact,” Kassem said in the 40-minute interview.

The war began on October 7 after Hamas militants invaded southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people – mostly civilians – and kidnapping about 250. Israel responded with an air and ground assault that caused widespread devastation and killed more than 37,900 people in Gaza, according to the Israeli government. Ministry of Healthwhich does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.

Talks on a ceasefire in Gaza have stalled in recent weeks, raising fears of escalation on the Lebanese-Israeli front. Hezbollah has carried out almost daily attacks with Israeli forces along its border for the past nine months.

The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has forced tens of thousands of people to flee on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border. In northern Israel, 16 soldiers and 11 civilians were killed; in Lebanon, more than 450 people were killed – mostly fighters, but also dozens of civilians.

Hamas is demanding an end to the war in Gaza, not just a pause in the fighting. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, refuses to make such a commitment until Israel achieves its goals of destroying Hamas’ military and governmental capabilities and rehabilitating the roughly 120 hostages still held by Hamas.

Last month, the Israeli army said it had “approved and confirmed” plans for an offensive in Lebanon if no diplomatic solution to the ongoing clashes was found, saying any decision to launch such an operation would have to come from the country’s political leadership.

Some Israeli politicians have said they want to find a diplomatic solution to the standoff and hope to avoid war, but have warned that if war breaks out in Lebanon, the images of destruction seen in Gaza will be repeated.

Hezbollah, on the other hand, is far more powerful than Hamas and is said to have a huge arsenal of rockets and missiles with which it can hit any place in Israel.

Kassem said he did not believe Israel was currently in a position – or had chosen – to start a full-scale war with Hezbollah. He warned that even if Israel intended a limited operation in Lebanon that did not lead to a full-scale war, it could not expect the fighting to remain limited.

“Israel can decide what it wants: limited war, total war, partial war,” he said. “But it must expect that our response and resistance will not be within the limits and rules of engagement set by Israel… If Israel wages the war, that means it does not control its scope or who enters it.”

The latter was an obvious Reference to Hezbollah’s allies in the region’s so-called “axis of resistance” backed by Iran. Armed groups in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere – and possibly Iran itself – could enter the fray in the event of a full-scale war in Lebanon that could also draw in Israel’s strongest ally, the United States.

American, European and US diplomats have been commuting between Lebanon and Israel for months, Attempt to avert a larger conflict.

Kassem said he met with Germany’s deputy intelligence chief, Ole Dieh, in Beirut on Saturday. U.S. officials do not meet directly with Hezbollah because Washington has designated it a terrorist group, but they regularly send messages through intermediaries.

Kassem said White House envoy Amos Hochstein recently urged Hezbollah through intermediaries to pressure Hamas to accept a ceasefire and hostage exchange proposed by US President Joe Biden. He said Hezbollah had rejected the request.

“Hamas is the one that makes its decisions and whoever wants to demand something should speak to them directly,” he said.

Kassem criticized US efforts to find a solution to the war in Gaza, saying they had supported Israel’s plans to end Hamas’ presence in Gaza. A constructive agreement, he said, would aim to end the war, get Israel to withdraw from Gaza and secure the release of hostages.

Once a ceasefire is reached, the agreements in the Gaza Strip and on the front with Lebanon could be finalized at the political level, he added.

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Associated Press writers Kareem Chehayeb and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.