BEIRUT, Lebanon — Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said Sunday his group would not surrender or lay down its weapons in response to Israeli threats, despite pressure from Lebanon’s Western-backed government demanding the terror group disarm.

The response came after Lebanese leaders sought the group’s input as it formulates an answer to a proposal raised by US envoy Tom Barrack that would reportedly see Israel halt attacks on Lebanese soil in exchange for Hezbollah giving up its arms.

“This threat will not make us accept surrender,” Qassem said in a televised speech to thousands of his supporters in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, during the Shiite Muslim religious commemoration of Ashura.

Qassem, who succeeded longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah after Israel killed him in September, said the group’s fighters would not abandon their arms and asserted that Israel’s “aggression” must first stop.

“How can you expect us not to stand firm while the Israeli enemy continues its aggression, continues to occupy the five points, and continues to enter our territories and kill?” Qassem said in his video address. “We will not be part of legitimizing the occupation in Lebanon and the region. We will not accept normalization [with Israel].”

Israel has regularly carried out drone strikes in Lebanon it says are aimed at operatives belonging to the Iran-backed group, despite a ceasefire in November that followed over a year of conflict, and two months of open war, sparked by daily Hezbollah rocket, missile and drone attacks on northern Israel starting on October 8, 2023.

It has also kept troops deployed at five border points........

© The Times of Israel