Lebanese President Michel Aoun expressed willingness to consider peace talks with Israel in an interview with French BFM TV news channel on Saturday night, just days after the United Arab Emirates signed a historic normalization deal with Israel.
In response to a question concerning whether Lebanon would consider making peace with Israel, Aoun stated, “That depends. We have problems with Israel, and we have to resolve them first.” Aoun did not specify what problems would need to be resolved.Recall, Aoun, represents Lebanon, and is an ally with the Hezbollah terrorist group. In 2006, Aoun signed a formal agreement of alliance between his Free Patriotic Movement and Hezbollah, and has consistently backed the Shi’ite group ever since.
In remarks made after his 2006 election aimed at Hezbollah backers, Aoun vowed to “release what is left of our lands from the Israeli occupation,” referring to contested territories along the border with the Jewish state.
Concerning the recent normalization deal signed between the UAE and Israel, Aoun stated that the UAE is an “independent country.”In a statement made concerning neutrality in July, Aoun stated that Lebanon will “not attack anyone,” but is “obliged to defend” itself, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency.In a television interview in 2005, Aoun pointed to peace deals made between Israel and Jordan and Egypt and stressed that “Lebanon, which has been resisting for 35 years, cannot continue to resist Israel all by itself. It cannot go against the general Arab trend,” according to MEMRI. He added that he was “not calling for peace” and that Lebanon would be the “last to sign a peace agreement with Israel.”
The statements on Saturday come amid continued tensions between Hezbollah and Israel and claims in Lebanon and Iran that Israel was behind the blast at the Beirut Port that killed 178 people and destroyed much of the nation’s capital.
In the interview on Saturday night, Aoun said all hypotheses remained open in the investigation into the blast at the port of Beirut that wrecked huge swathes of the capital.
On Friday, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah warned that if it was found that Israel was responsible for the blast, it would pay an “equal price,” according to the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Manar TV.
The Hezbollah leader called the deal between the UAE and Israel a “stab in the back.”
Nasrallah added that the terror group still intended to respond to the killing of a Hezbollah member in an alleged Israeli airstrike in Damascus last month, saying that it was a “matter of time.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
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