Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said this Sunday (2) that the Lebanese government must fulfill its commitment to disarm Hezbollah and expel it from southern Lebanon, as Israel continues to attack the group in the region.
The Israeli army said in a statement released on Sunday that it had killed four people linked to Hezbollah.
The United States brokered a ceasefire in November 2024 between Lebanon and Israel after more than a year of conflict sparked by the war in Gaza, but those across the border continue sporadically.
Katz also stated that maximum enforcement will continue and be intensified to protect Israeli residents in the north of the country.
According to the agreement, which ended more than a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, Lebanon agreed that only state security forces should carry weapons in the country. This would mean the complete disarmament of the group.
Since then, Lebanon has come under pressure from the US, Saudi Arabia and Hezbollah’s internal rivals to disarm the group.
Lebanese army sources told Reuters they had blown up so many Hezbollah weapons depots that they had run out of explosives, but they needed to act with extreme caution to avoid inflaming tensions within the country.
Once the dominant political party in Lebanon, Hezbollah was severely weakened by Israel’s war last year, which killed thousands of fighters and longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah.
The war also killed more than 1,100 women and children and devastated vast areas of southern and eastern Lebanon.
Hezbollah has publicly committed to the ceasefire and has not opposed the seizure of unmanned weapons depots in the south, and has not fired at Israel since the November truce.
However, he insists that disarmament, as mentioned in the text, applies only to southern Lebanon and insinuated that a conflict would be possible if the State acted against the group.
