Despite the public reappearance of armed Hizbullah gunmen in southern Lebanon, senior IDF officers said Wednesday that Israel would uphold the cease-fire and begin to gradually withdraw its forces ahead of the planned deployment of the Lebanese army in the south, scheduled to begin on Thursday.
“There will be no confrontation between the army and brothers in Hizbullah. That is not the army's mission. They are not going to chase and, God forbid, exact revenge...” | On Wednesday, the Lebanese cabinet approved a plan to deploy troops south of the Litani River and to extend government authority over the region, a key provision of the UN cease-fire plan that ended 34 days of fighting. But the cabinet said soldiers would not "chase" or "take revenge" on Hizbullah guerrillas in a bid to disarm the fighters. "There will be no confrontation between the army and brothers in Hizbullah... That is not the army's mission... No the mission is to prevent others from doing just that. And to keep our throats intact, we hope. | They are not going to chase and, God forbid, exact revenge," said Information Minister Ghazi Aridi after the two-hour cabinet meeting.
Senior Hizbullah official Hassan Fadlallah said that the issue of his organization's disarmament was not on the agenda. According to Fadlallah, who spoke with al-Jazeera, Hizbullah will not evacuate its operatives from southern Lebanon since they are the ones who populate the region. "Any such withdrawal means the evacuation of southern Lebanon," he said. |