 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. |