Hezbollah Refuses Talks, Lebanon President: Taking the Country to War is a Betrayal

President Lebaon Joseph Aoun. (Wikimedia Commons/Official State Department/Freddie Everet)

JAKARTA - Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said on Monday that direct negotiations with Israel aimed to end the Israel-Hezbollah war, stressing that those who dragged Lebanon into the war were the ones who committed treason, a veiled reference to Hezbollah after the group's leader called the negotiations a sin.

"My goal is to end the state of war with Israel, similar to the armistice agreement" of 1949, President Aoun said in a statement on Monday, launching Al Arabiya from AFP (27/4).

Lebanon and Israel, which have been officially at war for decades, signed a cease-fire agreement that ended fighting between the two countries in 1949, after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

"Is the ceasefire agreement an insult? I guarantee that I will not accept a shameful deal," President Aoun said.

President Aoun's statement came shortly after Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem harshly criticized the government, issuing a statement describing direct negotiations with Israel as a "great sin."

"We categorically reject direct negotiations with Israel, and those in power must know that their actions will not benefit Lebanon or themselves," Qassem said in a statement, broadcast by Al-Manar TV channel.

Furthermore, Qassem called on the authorities to "back down from their great sin of putting Lebanon in a spiral of instability."

He added that the Lebanese government "cannot continue while they ignore Lebanese rights, hand over land, and face their people who are against it."

"We will not surrender our weapons and the Israeli enemy will not remain in even an inch of our occupied land," he added.

Previously, the ambassadors of Lebanon and Israel to the US met twice in Washington over the past few weeks, the first meeting in decades, for discussions that were categorically rejected by Hezbollah.

After the first round of talks, US President Donald Trump announced a 10-day ceasefire that took effect on April 17, then announced a three-week extension after the second round of talks.

President Aoun said, "what we are doing is not a betrayal. On the contrary, the betrayal is committed by those who bring their country into war to achieve foreign interests."

President Aoun himself has faced harsh criticism from Hezbollah and its supporters, who say his push for direct talks with Israel lacks consensus from various communities in Lebanon.

This marks the latest point of contention after the Lebanese government decided to disarm the Hezbollah group last year and banned its military activities in March.

"Some parties want to hold us accountable for the decision to negotiate on the grounds that there is no national consensus" on the talks, President Aoun said.

"My question to them is: when you are at war, do you first obtain a national consensus?" he asked.

It is known that Hezbollah dragged Lebanon into the Middle East war on March 2 by firing rockets at Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei in a US-Israeli attack.