Hezbollah should abandon arms to end Israel war, Lebanese Christian party head says

By Maya Gebeily and Timour Azhari

MAARAB, Lebanon (Reuters) - The head of Lebanon's largest Christian party said Iran-backed Hezbollah should relinquish its weapons as quickly as possible to end its year-long war with Israel and spare Lebanon further death and destruction.

Samir Geagea, Hezbollah's fiercest political opponent in Lebanon, spoke to Reuters on Thursday at his mountain home and party headquarters in Maarab, north of Beirut, as Israel carried out waves of strikes on areas Hezbollah holds sway.

"With the destruction of all of Hezbollah's infrastructure and its warehouses, a big part of Lebanon is also being destroyed. That's the price," he said.

Hezbollah's critics in Lebanon, such as Geagea, say it unilaterally pulled Lebanon into a new war after it began firing at Israel in solidarity with Palestinian group Hamas following the Oct. 7 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.

Hezbollah says it is defending Lebanon from Israeli aggression and has vowed to keep fighting, saying it will not lay down its arms or allow Israel to achieve political gains on the back of the war.

The intense pressure of Israel's military campaign, which has escalated and expanded since late September to include ground incursions into southern Lebanon, presented an opportunity to get the country back on track, Geagea said.

"If the challenges and the prices paid are so big, then we can take advantage of them to get the situation back to normal," he said, calling on Hezbollah and the Lebanese state to swiftly implement local accords and international resolutions disbanding armed factions outside the control of the state.

"That is the shortest way to end the war. It's the least costly way for Lebanon and for the Lebanese people," he said.

Faltering diplomatic efforts on a ceasefire have centred on United Nations Resolution 1701, which brought an end to Hezbollah's last deadly conflict with Israel in 2006.

Israel has insisted that this time around, it wants to keep carrying out strikes against Hezbollah threats even if a truce is agreed.

Geagea said he was opposed to granting Israel that option but said Lebanon had little power to stop it, especially if an excuse remained in the form of Hezbollah's armed presence.

'ARMS RACE'

Lebanon's population is a mosaic of more than a dozen religious sects, with political representation divided along sectarian lines. Religious divisions fuelled the 1975-1990 civil war, which left some 150,000 people dead and drew in neighbouring states.

Geagea's party, the Lebanese Forces, was one of the main warring factions during the civil war and aligned itself with Israel, including when Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon reached Beirut, and its leader, Bashir Gemayel, was elected president.

Gemayel was assassinated before he could assume office, and Geagea said he saw no parallels with that period today.

The Lebanese Forces relinquished its weapons in line with the Taef Accord, which ended the civil war and called on all militias to disband.

Hezbollah did not, saying it needed them to fight Israel's continued occupation of southern Lebanon. But the group refused to disarm when Israeli troops withdrew in 2000, citing ongoing threats.

Despite his decades-old opposition to Hezbollah, Geagea, 72, said he opposed the Lebanese army forcefully disarming the group.

He said he does "not see the possibility of any civil war" breaking out and said that his party "categorically" did not want one to start.

Still, he noted that the mass displacement of mostly Shi'ite Muslim Lebanese into Sunni and Christian-majority areas could spark "problems here or there" in a country that was already suffering an economic crisis before the war.

They include thousands who have fled into areas that are strongholds of Geagea's party. In Beirut, Lebanese Forces flags were put up overnight in neighbourhoods where the group has strong support, but no clashes have been reported.

More than 1.2 million people have fled heavy Israeli strikes on Lebanon's south, eastern Bekaa valley and Beirut's southern suburbs.

In recent weeks, Israeli troops carrying out incursions into southern Lebanon have laced entire villages with explosives and detonated them, leaving border towns in ruins.

Hezbollah says it has managed to keep Israeli troops at bay by preventing them from holding any ground in south Lebanon.

But Geagea disputed that reading, saying Israel's "new military doctrine" was to enter areas, carry out operations, and leave, and that the war's next phase could see villages deeper into Lebanon being hit.

He said Israel's military and economic strength would always give it an advantage over Hezbollah, even if the group re-armed.

"Do you have the ability to enter this arms race?" he said.

(Reporting by Maya Gebeily and Timour Azhari in Maarab; Editing by Alex Richardson)