Hezbollah to accept any Hamas truce decision, abide by ceasefire

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said yesterday his group would accept Palestinian ally Hamas’ decision on Gaza truce negotiations and would stop cross-border attacks on Israel if a ceasefire were reached.
Hezbollah has traded almost daily fire with Israeli forces in support of Hamas since the Palestinian group’s October first week storming of Israel triggered war in the Gaza Strip.
“Hamas is negotiating... on behalf of the whole axis of resistance,” Nasrallah said, referring to regional pro-Iran groups opposed to Israel and the US.
“Whatever Hamas accepts, everyone accepts and is satisfied with,” he said, adding: “We do not ask (Hamas) to co-ordinate with us because the battle in the first instance is theirs.” Nasrallah’s remarks came days after he met with a Hamas delegation headed by foreign relations chief Khalil al-Hayya, and as talks were to resume in Qatar towards a truce and hostage release deal in the Gaza war, now grinding into its 10th month.
Hamas has signalled that it would drop its insistence on a “complete” ceasefire — which Israel has repeatedly rejected — as a condition for starting truce talks.
Nasrallah repeated his position that “if a ceasefire is reached, and we all hope for that... our front will cease fire without any discussion”. “That is a commitment, because it is a support front and we have been clear (about this) from the start,” he said, during a televised address commemorating a senior Hezbollah commander killed in an Israeli strike last week.
However, Nasrallah warned that “we will never allow any attack that the Israeli enemy might carry out against Lebanon (even) if there is a ceasefire in Gaza”.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Sunday that “we will continue fighting and doing everything necessary to bring about the desired result” in the campaign against Hezbollah, “even if there is a ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah announced three new attacks yesterday, including an “aerial offensive with a squadron of explosive drones” targeting a military base in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.
The Israeli military said one soldier was lightly wounded after “approximately three” drones “crossed from Lebanon... and fell” in the southern Golan Heights.
The Lebanese group, which has increased its use of explosive drones in recent weeks, said the latest attack was in retaliation “for the attack and assassination carried out by the Israeli enemy... on the Damascus-Beirut road” on Tuesday. A source close to the group, requesting anonymity, told AFP that a former bodyguard to Nasrallah was killed in the strike, identifying him by the surname of Qarnabash. Hezbollah in a statement announced the death of a fighter with the same surname.
In Lebanon, the cross-border violence since October has killed nearly 500 people, mostly fighters but also including 95 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
Nasrallah said Israeli demands to push Hezbollah back from the border “won’t fix” the situation for Israel. His group’s launching of “hundreds of rockets and dozens of drones in a single day” towards Israeli targets was a message “that Hezbollah doesn’t fear war”, he added.