Rare maritime talks do not mean normalization with Israel: Hezbollah

The Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement says a UN-brokered indirect maritime negotiations with Israel do not signify "reconciliation" or "normalization" with the Zionist entity.

Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc said in a statement on Thursday that the talks have "absolutely nothing to do with either any reconciliation with the Zionist enemy... or policies of normalization recently adopted... by Arab states."

"Defining the coordinates of national sovereignty is the responsibility of the Lebanese state," it said in a statement.

Lebanon's parliament speaker Nabih Berri last week announced the talks would go ahead.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric has recently said Lebanon's maritime border talks, to be held at the headquarters of the UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL in the southern town of Naqoura, will start around mid-October.

The issue of the sea frontier is especially sensitive as Lebanon hopes to continue exploring for oil and gas in a part of the Mediterranean.

In February 2018, Lebanon signed its first contract for offshore drilling for oil and gas in two blocks in the Mediterranean with a consortium comprising energy giants Total, ENI and Novatek.

Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem on Monday strongly condemned normalization with Israel as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause, emphasizing that Arab rulers scrambling to establish diplomatic ties with the Tel Aviv regime have reaped nothing but humiliation and disgrace.

Normalization act of betrayal against al-Quds issue, Palestinian cause: Senior Hezbollah official

A senior Hezbollah official denounces normalization with Israel as an act of betrayal of the Palestinian cause.

He underlined that Palestinians are at the vanguard of the resistance front seeking to liberate Jerusalem al-Quds, calling for support for them.

Qassem was reacting to the recent decisions by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to sign contentious US-mediated normalization deals with Israel.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed the deals with UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Bahrain's Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani during an official ceremony hosted by US President Donald Trump at the White House on September 15.

Palestinians, who seek an independent state in the occupied West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital, view the deals as betrayal of their cause.

Hezbollah is credited with ending two decades of Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000.

Liberation of southern Lebanon shattered Israel’s invincibility myth: Hezbollah deputy chief

The Hezbollah deputy chief says the liberation of southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation shattered the Israeli military’s invincibility myth.

Lebanon marks the Resistance and Liberation Day on May 25 each year. In May 2000, the Israeli regime was forced by Hezbollah to withdraw its troops from Lebanon, ending nearly two decades of occupation of the country's south.

Hezbollah was established following the 1982 Israeli invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon.

Since then, the movement has grown into a powerful military force, dealing repeated blows to the Israeli military, including during a 33-day war in July 2006.

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