Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri commented on the statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, which called on President Joseph Aoun to hold a direct meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying: “The statement speaks for itself, and I have nothing to add to it.”
Berri added that he had “shut down his engines,” in reference to the nature of the political response to what had been circulated, stressing that his reply to the president came in response to what Aoun had said during his meeting with the economic bodies, referring to Aoun’s remarks about full coordination with Berri regarding the negotiations, according to Al Sharq Al Awsat TV.
Berri explained that this position was among the reasons that prompted him to apologize for not attending the meeting that had been scheduled at the presidential palace with the president and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam.
In a related context, Berri addressed what he described as the “three-week truce” that had been discussed with the intervention of U.S. President Donald Trump, asking:
“Where is this truce? Has Israel stopped bulldozing the towns, demolishing homes, spilling the blood of children, women, and the elderly, and preventing ambulance crews from rescuing the wounded and transporting them to hospitals, or from pulling out those trapped under the rubble until they died?”
He also pointed to the “targeting of health bodies and paramedics, which led to the martyrdom of dozens of them,” asking whether all these victims were “part of Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, as Israel claims in order to justify its destruction of the southern towns.”
Berri concluded by stressing that “the alleged truce allowed Israel to persist in its aggression and commit massacres in an unprecedented manner, without U.S. intervention to compel it to stop hostilities and consolidate the ceasefire, especially since it was behind the agreement to extend the truce. This calls on it to respect its pledge before the Lebanese people and the international community. Otherwise, what is the point of negotiations under Israeli fire pressure? And what shall we say to the families of the victims of Israeli treachery from the South?”
