Children and women are not military targets: Lebanon angry after Israeli strikes
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said that the Israeli strikes constituted “a clear message regarding the negotiation process” with Israel, while Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam expressed his anger after an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon killed seven people.
Salam said that the seven people killed in an Israeli strike in the south of the country on Saturday, including two women and three children, “are not military targets,” after Israel said it had targeted “infrastructure” belonging to Hezbollah.
Salam said that the seven victims of the Israeli strike on the town of Ansar were not military infrastructure, adding that Israel must “put an end to this escalation,” which he described as “extremely dangerous and undermining efforts to consolidate stability in the south.”
With the deaths of the seven civilians, Lebanon recorded its highest death toll since the signing, in June, of the memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran, as well as the framework agreement between Tel Aviv and Beirut at the end of the same month. These agreements were followed by a significant decline in the level of violence.
The framework agreement reached between Lebanon and Israel after five rounds of negotiations under U.S. mediation provides for the disarmament of Hezbollah, the gradual withdrawal of Israel from the territories it occupies in southern Lebanon, and the deployment of the Lebanese Army, beginning in “pilot” areas.
Hezbollah categorically rejects any direct negotiations with Israel and any relinquishment of its weapons.
Last Thursday, Salam said that Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz’s statement regarding his intention to keep Israeli forces in areas occupied in the south was “completely and unequivocally unacceptable,” stressing that it contradicted the substance of the framework agreement between the two countries.
At the beginning of a Lebanese government meeting held at the headquarters of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Salam said that Katz’s remarks about maintaining Israeli occupation forces in Lebanon, Gaza and Syria were “completely and unequivocally unacceptable.”
According to Information Minister Paul Morcos, who read out the decisions adopted during the meeting, Salam welcomed the U.S. response to the statement, saying that it “is inconsistent with the trilateral framework between Lebanon, Israel and the United States.”
Washington announced on Tuesday that it would sponsor a new round of negotiations between Israel and Lebanon in Rome in early September, expressing its “satisfaction with the way things are developing.”
