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04-11-2025
JERUSALEM/ BEIRUT: Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Sunday the Lebanese government must fulfill its commitment to disarm Hezbollah and remove it from southern Lebanon, as Israel continued to intermittently attack the group in the south of the country.
The Israeli military said that it had killed four people from Hezbollah in a statement on Sunday.
The US brokered a truce in November 2024 between Lebanon and Israel after more than a year of conflict sparked by the war in Gaza, but Israeli strikes across the border have continued sporadically.
Katz also said maximum enforcement efforts would continue and intensify to protect Israeli residents in the north. Under the November 2024 ceasefire that ended more than a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, Lebanon agreed that only state security forces should bear arms in the country. That would mean fully disarming Hezbollah.
Since then, Lebanon has been under pressure from the US, Saudi Arabia and Hezbollah’s domestic rivals to disarm the group.
Lebanese army sources told Reuters they had blown up, opens new tab so many Hezbollah arms caches they had run out of explosives, but they have had to walk a careful tightrope to avoid inflaming tensions within the country.
Once the dominant political party in Lebanon, Hezbollah was severely weakened by Israel’s war last year, which killed thousands of fighters and longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah. The war also killed more than 1,100 women and children and destroyed swathes of Lebanon’s south and east.
Hezbollah has publicly committed to the ceasefire and has not opposed the seizures of unmanned weapons caches in the south and has not fired on Israel since the November truce.
However, it insists the disarmament, as mentioned in the text, only applies to the south of Lebanon and has hinted conflict was possible if the state moved against the group.
Earlier, Lebanon’s army has blown up so many Hezbollah arms caches that it has run out of explosives, as it races to meet a year-end deadline to disarm the Shi’ite militia in the south of the country under a ceasefire agreed with Israel, two sources told media.
The explosives shortage, which has not been previously reported, has not stopped the army quickening the pace of inspection missions to search for hidden weapons in the south, near Israel, the two said, one of whom is a security source and the other a Lebanese official.
It would have been unimaginable for Lebanon’s military to embark on such a task at the zenith of Iran-backed Hezbollah’s power just a few years ago, and many observers were skeptical even after the ceasefire agreement but Hezbollah was hit hard by Israel’s war last year, which killed thousands of fighters and the upper echelons of both the military and political wings, including leader Hassan Nasrallah. The war also killed more than 1,100 women and children and destroyed swathes of Lebanon’s south and east.
The US has kept up pressure on Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah, which is designated a terrorist group by Washington. President Donald Trump’s deputy Middle East envoy Morgan Ortagus is in Beirut this week to discuss momentum on disarmament with Lebanese officials. As they wait for US deliveries of explosives charges and other military equipment, Lebanese troops are now sealing off sites they find instead of destroying them, said one of the sources and two other people briefed on the army’s recent activities. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
