BEIRUT – During the meeting of the regional councils in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israeli war minister Israel Katz announced that its occupying troops would remain in southern Lebanon indefinitely.

“There is a buffer zone. It wasn’t easy but I stood my ground, and we received a green light from the United States. We gave them a map, and we are staying indefinitely – this is situation-dependent, not time-dependent,” Katz stated. 

The Israeli occupation forces were scheduled to withdraw on February 18 under the November 27 truce agreement, which ended more than a year of hostilities, including two months of all-out US-led Israeli aggression against Lebanon.

However, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’er pointed out, “We will remain – temporarily – in five high strategic points necessary for our security.” 

Sa’er claimed that “once Lebanon fulfils its obligations, there will be no need to protect those points.” 

An informed source told the Tehran Times that these 5 occupied sites will increase as the Israeli enemy has hinted it intends to expand the Al-Lubuna site towards the outskirts of Ulama al-Shaab, as well as to occupy another site between the outskirts of Aita al-Shaab and Rmeish, while pointing to the possibility of annexing other sites on the outskirts of Shabaa to the Rashia district to ensure dominance over the Syrian south.

Despite the continuous escalation, there are no positive diplomatic efforts by President Joseph Aoun and his prime minister, Nawaf Salam, on this matter.

Aoun said his government was working to achieve a full Israeli withdrawal “diplomatically”, while an estimated 100,000 Lebanese citizens remain internally displaced.

The U.S. co-chairs a committee tasked with ensuring any ceasefire violations are identified and dealt with.  The committee, also involving France, propagates the false Israeli narration that Hezbollah has not committed to implementing the agreement and that the Lebanese army is not doing what it is supposed to do. 
This is the self-inflicted accusation by the spoiled boys in the American Embassy in Beirut in exchange for a handful of dollars.

The informed source told the Tehran Times that the responsibility of those spoiled boys is to promote that Hezbollah prohibits the Lebanese army’s implementation of the agreement, the inspection of its military infrastructure, the confiscation of weapons from the southerners’ houses, monitoring its members’ military and security activities, allowing UNIFIL forces to operate freely in the south and north of the Litani River, etc.

According to what these politicians, journalists and activists claim, the actual implementation of the agreement on the part of Lebanon requires the unconditional disarmament of Hezbollah in all Lebanese areas, as well as the deployment of UNIFIL along the border with Syria.

These spoiled boys justify the continuous US-led aggression against Lebanon as a natural reaction consistent with the clauses of the cease-fire agreement, which gives the occupying entity the right to remove any “threat” and that the people of the south and the Bekaa must only wait for “diplomatic” gifts!

The informed source expects that in the next stage these spoiled boys will publicly call for: closing the Iranian embassy in Beirut and severing relations with it; settling Palestinians and Syrians; preventing the reconstruction of border villages; normalization between Lebanon and the Israeli enemy entity; appointing anti-Hezbollah nominees in judicial, financial, security and military positions in a bid to entirely marginalize the resistance.

The only solution to implement these American dreams after the failure of its last September-November aggression is to ignite a civil war!

For its part, Hezbollah is committed to giving the Lebanese state a chance to implement what it declared about its responsibility to preserve Lebanon’s sovereignty, secure a complete withdrawal, free prisoners, and stop the Israeli attacks.

Hezbollah presents an argument to those claiming sovereignty, even though it knows in advance that nothing is useful in dealing with the Zionist enemy except the logic of force!