By Laila Bassam, Steven Scheer and Ahmed Elimam
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM, June 4 (Reuters) – Hezbollah rejected a ceasefire plan agreed by the Lebanese and Israeli governments in U.S.-mediated talks, as Israel kept up strikes in southern Lebanon on Thursday and said it wouldn’t be withdrawing from the south.
The United States announced on Wednesday that Lebanon and Israel had agreed to implement a ceasefire contingent on Iran-backed Hezbollah ceasing fire and evacuating its fighters from areas of southern Lebanon near the border.
Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem, whose Lebanese Shi’ite Muslim group is not a party to the talks, said the negotiations were shameless, rejecting the Washington declaration as “a roadmap for the annihilation of a section of the Lebanese people and the enslavement of the rest.”
“As long as the occupation exists, the resistance will continue,” he said in a written statement.
Hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel reignited on March 2, when the group opened fire in support of Tehran as it came under U.S.-Israeli attack. The war has ground on despite several ceasefires declared from Washington since April.
The war has become a sticking point in diplomacy towards resolving the regional conflict. Tehran has demanded an end to Israeli attacks in Lebanon as part of any deal.
Qassem said a ceasefire must include southern Lebanon, where Israel has seized a self-declared security zone, which it says aims to shield northern Israel from Hezbollah attack.
Qassem said that towns in northern Israel would not be secure “as long as our villages are unsafe, bombed, destroyed, and our people are being killed.”
The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Quds Force – which established Hezbollah in 1982 – said “the minimum demand of the resistance” is Israel’s withdrawal to positions it held before the war began and Israeli forces invaded the south.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz earlier on Thursday said Israel would continue to strike Lebanon for the time being. The Israeli military, in a warning to residents of the south, said it was continuing to target Hezbollah facilities.
(Additional reporting by Alexander Cornwell in Jerusalem, Tom Perry in Beirut, Ahmed Elimam and Jana Choukeir in Dubai; Writing by Alexander Cornwell and Tom Perry; Editing by Sharon Singleton and Peter Graff)
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