Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem on Friday again rejected a deal struck between Israel and Lebanon and said his Iran-backed terrorist group refused to “surrender” nearly six months after war erupted with Israel.

“We are against the framework agreement and call for its downfall,” Qassem said in a televised address broadcast on the group’s Al-Manar television channel.

Israel and Lebanon launched US-sponsored direct talks after Hezbollah waded into the US-Israel war with Iran on March 2 by attacking Israel, which responded with massive strikes and a ground invasion, seizing a self-declared “security zone” that runs around 10 kilometers (six miles) deep inside Lebanese territory along the border.

At talks in late June, Lebanon and Israel signed a framework deal that calls for the disarmament of Hezbollah, a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the region, starting in “pilot zones.”

“The framework agreement is illegitimate, unlawful, humiliating, destructive to Lebanese sovereignty,” Qassem said.

“We do not agree to the ‘pilot zones’ or to what comes from them,”........

© The Times of Israel