Lebanese Christian leader: Hezbollah’s fighting with Israel harming Lebanon
Samir Geagea calls on the terrorist group to withdraw from the Israeli border area and for the Lebanese army to deploy there instead
The leader of a main Christian political party in Lebanon blasted the Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah for opening a front with Israel to back up its ally Hamas, saying it has harmed Lebanon without making a dent in Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday night, Samir Geagea of the Lebanese Forces Party said Hezbollah should withdraw from areas along the border with Israel and the Lebanese army should deploy in all points where terrorists of the Iran-backed group have taken positions.
His comments came as Western diplomats try to broker a de-escalation in the border conflict amid fears of a wider war.
Hezbollah began launching rockets toward Israeli military posts on October 8, the day after Hamas-led terrorists stormed into southern Israel in a surprise attack that sparked the war in Gaza. The terrorists killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians murdered in cold blood, and took 253 hostages.
The near-daily violence up north has mostly been confined to the area along the border, and international mediators have been scrambling to prevent an all-out war. The fighting has killed 12 soldiers and 10 civilians in Israel. More than 350 people have been killed in Lebanon including 273 Hezbollah fighters and more than 50 civilians.
“No one has the right to control the fate of a country and people on its own,” Geagea said in his heavily guarded headquarters in the mountain village of Maarab. “Hezbollah is not the government in Lebanon. There is a government in Lebanon in which Hezbollah is represented.” In addition to its military arm, Hezbollah is a political party.
Geagea, whose party has the largest bloc in Lebanon’s 128-member parliament, has angled to position himself as the leader of the opposition against Hezbollah.
Hezbollah officials have said that by opening the front along Israel’s northern border, the terrorist group has reduced the pressure on Gaza by keeping several Israeli army divisions on alert in the north rather than taking part in the months-long offensive in the enclave.
“All the damage that could have happened in Gaza… happened. What was the benefit of military operations that were launched from south Lebanon? Nothing,” Geagea said, pointing to the death toll and massive destruction in Lebanon’s border villages.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza claims that Israel has killed more than 34,000 people in Gaza, but the number cannot be independently verified and is believed to include both Hamas terrorists and civilians, some of whom were killed as a consequence of the terror group’s own rocket misfires.
The IDF says it has killed over 13,000 terrorists in Gaza, in addition to some 1,000 who were killed inside Israel on and immediately following October 7. The army has lost 263 troops throughout the offensive in the Strip.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Tuesday to launch an operation into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where four Hamas battalions remain intact, despite international calls for restraint.
Geagea said Hezbollah aims through the ongoing fighting to benefit its main backer, Iran, by giving it a presence along Israel’s border and called for the group to withdraw from border areas and Lebanese army to deploy in accordance with a UN Security Council resolution that ended the 34-day Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006.
Geagea also discussed the campaign by his party to repatriate Syrian refugees who fled war into Lebanon.
Those calls intensified after a Syrian gang was blamed for last month’s killing of Lebanese Forces official Pascal Suleiman, allegedly in a carjacking gone wrong, although many initially suspected political motives.
