ISTANBUL

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Sunday that the implementation of last year’s ceasefire agreement with Israel must apply to both sides, arguing that political debate has focused unfairly on Hezbollah’s commitments while ignoring clear Israeli violations of the deal.

Speaking during a newsmaker interview with Gregg Carlstrom, Middle East correspondent for the Economist at the Doha Forum 2025, Salam said Lebanon is already living through a “war of attrition… conducted by one side, by Israel,” despite the ceasefire agreement that Beirut and Tel Aviv endorsed in 2024.

“We should have been in a situation of cessation of hostilities… which unfortunately has not been abided by Israel first,” Salam said. “There has been no cessation of hostilities on Israel’s part.”

The prime minister said enforcement of the deal must be reciprocal and rooted in the commitments each party accepted last year.

“Everyone should be held accountable for what they agreed to,” he said.

He noted that Hezbollah formally accepted the terms of the deal, which he said “lists the six and only six actors who can carry arms in Lebanon… Hezbollah is not among them.”

But Salam noted that Israel has not fulfilled its obligations, including withdrawing from several Lebanese border points it seized last year.

“Israel was supposed to have withdrawn from all of Lebanese territory… it occupied 10 months ago. Unfortunately, it didn’t do that,” he said.

The premier dismissed Israeli claims that the positions hold strategic value.

“No one was able to convince me that these points have any relevance in the age of satellite imagery, drones… and balloons monitoring the border,” he said. “We are not in 1914, 1915, 1916, or World War I, where you need to be on top of a hill to monitor what’s around you.”

Salam also pushed back on suggestions that Hezbollah’s weapons alone were preventing the full implementation of the agreement or UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which calls for a demilitarized zone south of the Litani River. Lebanon, he said, has honored its commitments.

Lebanon prepared an army plan to restore the state’s sole authority over weapons in phases, beginning with a full arms monopoly south and north of the Litani, he said.

But without Israeli compliance, Salam said, the process cannot be partial or one-directional.

“Implementation is not just for one party,” he said. Hezbollah, like any other Lebanese party that agreed to this instrument, will have to abide by it. But Israel must abide by what it agreed to as well.”

The Lebanese government on Aug. 5 approved a plan – based on a draft proposal presented by US Special Envoy Tom Barrack – to place all weapons, including those held by Hezbollah, under state control and tasked the army with implementing it by the end of 2025.

Hezbollah has repeatedly rejected the move and insists that Israeli forces must fully withdraw from Lebanese territory before any disarmament.

At least 335 people have been killed and 973 others wounded in 1,038 Israeli attacks since the ceasefire agreement came into effect in November 2024, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

The Israeli army was supposed to withdraw from southern Lebanon this January under the ceasefire, but instead only partially pulled out and continues to maintain a military presence at five border outposts.