Hezbollah said it supported efforts to secure a ceasefire with Israel as the IDF continued to target its top leadership and the two armies sharply increased their bombardments.
“After the issue of a ceasefire takes shape, and once diplomacy can achieve it, all of the other details can be discussed and decisions can be taken,” Hezbollah deputy leader Naim Qassem said on Tuesday. “If the enemy [Israel] continues its war, then the battlefield will decide.”
Qassem mentioned in particular the efforts of Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri to restore calm.
“We support the political activity being led by Berri under the title of a ceasefire,” the deputy leader said in his 30-minute televised address.
It was not clear whether this signaled any change in stance, after a year in which the group has said it is fighting to support both Hamas and the Palestinian people in their war with Israel and would not stop without a ceasefire in Gaza.
Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s second in command, addresses the crowd at the funeral of Ibrahim Aqil, the Hezbollah Radwan Forces commander, and Mahmoud Hamad, another Hezbollah commander, both killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in the southern suburb of Dahiyeh in Beirut,