Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Monday said that the framework agreement with Israel “will not pass” and “will not be implemented.”
Berri, who is an ally of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization, told Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar daily that his Amal movement would “confront” the deal in the Lebanese Cabinet.
He said the U.S.-brokered framework—which allows for the Israel Defense Forces to maintain a security zone in Southern Lebanon until Hezbollah is removed from the area—is “10 times worse” than the May 17, 1983, agreement, the closest Beirut and Jerusalem have come to a peace arrangement.
The Hezbollah ally said he was counting on the “U.S.-Iranian negotiating track” as the only framework capable of compelling the Jewish state to fulfill its “obligations” toward Lebanon.
A senior Israeli official told JNS on Sunday that one achievement of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s framework agreement with Lebanon is that it “trumps” the Memorandum of Understanding with Iran reached through Pakistani mediation earlier this month.
That agreement had called for an “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” even before Hezbollah’s disarmament.
The Israel-Lebanon agreement signed on Friday lays out two pilot zones recommended by the IDF, where the Lebanese Armed Forces would deploy and disarm the Iranian proxy.
