Hezbollah’s chief on Monday doubled down on his refusal to give up the group’s weapons ahead of talks between Lebanese officials and visiting US envoys after Lebanon’s government opted to disarm the Iran-backed rebels.
“We will not give up the weapons that protect us from attack,” Naim Qassem said in a televised address.
“These weapons are our soul, our honour, our land, our dignity, our children’s future,” he said, adding: “Whoever wants to take away these weapons wants to take away our souls.”
Under heavy US pressure and fears of Israel expanding its military action, Lebanon’s government this month tasked the army with drawing up a plan to disarm Hezbollah by the end of the year.
Hezbollah was the only faction that kept its weapons after Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war, doing so in the name of “resistance” against Israel, and has repeatedly…