Hezbollah leader refuses to disarm until Israel withdraws from southern
Lebanon
[July 07, 2025]
BEIRUT (AP) — Hezbollah leader Naim Kassem reiterated Sunday the
militant group’s refusal to lay down its weapons before Israel withdraws
from all of southern Lebanon and stops its airstrikes. He spoke in a
video address, as thousands gathered in Beirut’s southern suburbs to
mark the Shiite holy day of Ashoura.
Ashoura commemorates the 680 A.D. Battle of Karbala, in which the
Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Imam Hussein, was killed after he refused
to pledge allegiance to the Umayyad caliphate. For Shiites, the
commemoration has come to symbolize resistance against tyranny and
injustice.
This year’s commemoration comes in the wake of a bruising war between
Israel and Hezbollah, which nominally ended with a U.S.-brokered
ceasefire in late November. Israeli strikes killed much of Hezbollah’s
top leadership, including longtime Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah,
and destroyed much of its arsenal.
Since the ceasefire, Israel has continued to occupy five strategic
border points in southern Lebanon and to carry out near-daily airstrikes
that it says aim to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its capabilities.
Those strikes have killed some 250 people since November, in addition to
more than 4,000 killed during the war, according to Lebanon’s Health
Ministry. There has been increasing international and domestic pressure
for Hezbollah to give up 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?” Kassem said in his video
address. “We will not be part of legitimizing the occupation in Lebanon
and the region. We will not accept normalization (with Israel).”
In response to those who ask why the group needs its missile arsenal,
Kassem said: “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
defense?”
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Hezbollah supporters beat their chests as they march during Ashoura,
the Shiite Muslim commemoration marking the 7th-century death of
Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at the Battle of
Karbala, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, July 6,
2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
His comments come ahead of an expected visit by U.S. envoy Tom
Barrack to Beirut to discuss a proposed plan for Hezbollah’s
disarmament and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the rest of
southern Lebanon.
Barrack posted Saturday on X that Lebanon is facing “a historic
moment to supersede the strained confessionalism of the past and
finally fulfill (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.”
Later on Sunday, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported
that the Israeli military launched a series of airstrikes on
southern and eastern Lebanon, including in the area around the
eastern city of Baalbek and in Apple Province, a mountainous region
overlooking large parts of southern Lebanon.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it had struck “several
Hezbollah military sites, strategic weapons production and storage
sites, and a rocket launching site.”
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