Hezbollah leader Naim Kassem reiterated Sunday (July 6, 2025) the militant group’s refusal to lay down its weapons earlier than Israel withdraws from all of southern Lebanon and stops its airstrikes.
He spoke in a video tackle, as 1000’s gathered in Beirut’s southern suburbs to mark the Shia holy day of Ashoura. Ashoura commemorates the 680 AD Battle of Karbala, through which the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Imam Hussein, was killed after he refused to pledge allegiance to the Umayyad caliphate. For Shias, the commemoration has come to symbolise resistance in opposition to tyranny and injustice.
This yr’s commemoration comes within the wake of a bruising struggle between Israel and Hezbollah, which nominally ended with a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in late November. Israeli strikes killed a lot of Hezbollah’s high management, together with longtime Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, and destroyed a lot of its arsenal.
Since the ceasefire, Israel has continued to occupy 5 strategic border factors in southern Lebanon and to perform near-daily airstrikes that it says goal to forestall Hezbollah from rebuilding its capabilities. Those strikes have killed some 250 folks since November, as well as to greater than 4,000 killed in the course of the struggle, in accordance to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. There has been rising worldwide and home stress for Hezbollah to quit its remaining arsenal.
“How can you expect us not to stand firm while the Israeli enemy continues its aggression, continues to occupy the five points, and continues to enter our territories and kill?” Mr. Kassem mentioned in his video tackle.
“We will not be part of legitimising the occupation in Lebanon and the region. We will not accept normalisation (with Israel).”
In response to those that ask why the group wants its missile arsenal, Mr. Kassem mentioned: “How can we confront Israel when it attacks us if we didn’t have them? Who is preventing Israel from entering villages and landing and killing young people, women and children inside their homes unless there is a resistance with certain capabilities capable of minimal defence?”
His feedback come forward of an anticipated go to by U.S. envoy Tom Barrack to Beirut to focus on a proposed plan for Hezbollah’s disarmament and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the remainder of southern Lebanon.
Mr. Barrack posted Saturday (July 5, 2025) on X that Lebanon is dealing with “a historic moment to supersede the strained confessionalism of the past and finally fulfil (its) true promise of the hope of One country, one people, one army’” and quoted U.S. President Donald Trump saying, “Let’s make Lebanon Great again.”
