Full Gaza ceasefire needed to end Lebanon-Israel conflict: Hezbollah

The deputy leader of the Lebanese group Hezbollah has said the only sure path to a ceasefire on the Lebanon-Israel border is a full ceasefire in Gaza.

“If there is a ceasefire in Gaza, we will stop without any discussion,” Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Naim Kassem, said on Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press at the group’s political office in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

But, he said, if Israel scales back its military operations without a formal ceasefire agreement and full withdrawal from Gaza, the implications for the Lebanon-Israel border conflict are less clear.

"If what happens in Gaza is a mix between ceasefire and no ceasefire, war and no war, we can’t answer (how we would react) now, because we don’t know its shape, its results, its impacts," Kassem said during a 40-minute interview.

Israel launched a brutal war on Gaza after Hamas fighters stormed across the border into southern Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking more than 250 people hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's air and ground assaults have killed more than 37,900 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in the territory.

'Israel can decide what it wants'

Talks of a ceasefire in Gaza have faltered in recent weeks, raising fears of an escalation on the Lebanon-Israel front. Hezbollah has traded near-daily strikes with Israeli forces along their border over the past nine months.

The low-level conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border.

Hamas has demanded an end to the war in Gaza, and not just a pause in fighting, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to make such a commitment until Israel realises its goals of destroying Hamas’ military and governing capabilities and brings home the roughly 120 hostages still held by the resistance group.

Last month, the Israeli army said it had “approved and validated” plans for an offensive in Lebanon if no diplomatic solution was reached to the ongoing clashes.

Kassem said he doesn't believe that Israel currently has the ability — or has made a decision — to launch a full-blown war in Lebanon.

He warned that even if Israel intends to launch a limited conflict in Lebanon that stops short of a full-scale war, it should not expect the fighting to remain limited.

"Israel can decide what it wants: limited war, total war, partial war,” he said. “But it should expect that our response and our resistance will not be within a ceiling and rules of engagement set by Israel … If Israel wages the war, it means it doesn’t control its extent or who enters into it."