Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said on Saturday that the group would not allow itself to be disarmed as he addressed supporters marking one year since the killing by Israel of his predecessor Hassan Nasrallah.
Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli air strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut on September 27, 2024.
Without Nasrallah and with much of its military capability destroyed by Israel, Hezbollah’s grip on Lebanese politics has weakened, and Beirut has ordered the army to disarm the group.
“We will never abandon our weapons, nor will we relinquish them,” Qassem told the tens of thousands of supporters gathered at the tomb of the former chief on Saturday.
“We are ready for martyrdom,” he added.
Hezbollah is commemorating the killings of Nasrallah and second-in-command Hashem Safieddine in a series of events which began on Thursday with the projection of their images onto the iconic Raouche rock in Beirut, despite government opposition and the party’s lack of official authorization.
Despite a November ceasefire that ended over a year of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, the latter has kept up regular strikes on Lebanon and still has troops positioned at five border points inside Lebanon.
Hezbollah is under intense pressure to hand over its weapons, with the Lebanese army having drawn up a plan to disarm it, beginning in the south.
Lebanon itself is under pressure from the United States and ongoing Israeli strikes.
In October 2023, Hezbollah began launching rockets at Israel in support of Hamas in Gaza. Months of exchanges escalated into all-out war in September 2024, before a ceasefire was agreed two months later.
َAFP, Al-Arabiya
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