Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib has said that Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah agreed to a US and French-proposed 21-day ceasefire with Israel right before Israel killed him.
Habib said the US and France told Lebanon that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also agreed to the ceasefire proposal.
“They told us that Mr. Netanyahu agreed on this, and so we also got the agreement of Hezbollah on that. And, you know what happened since then,” Habib told CNN host Christiane Amanpour.
On September 25, the US, France, and several other nations released a joint statement calling for an immediate 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon to give time to reach a diplomatic solution to the situation on the Israel-Lebanon border. The following day, Netanyahu arrived in New York for the UN General Assembly and rejected rumors that Israel agreed to the truce.
US officials told the media that they coordinated the ceasefire proposal with Israel and were “frustrated” with Netanyahu for rejecting it. But the US put no real pressure on Israel to agree to the ceasefire. The same day Netanyahu rejected it, Israel announced it secured another $8.7 billion in military aid from Washington.
On Friday, September 27, Netanyahu ordered the massive airstrike that killed Nasrallah from a hotel in New York, following his address to the UN. Israeli officials told ABC News they decided to kill Nasrallah because he wouldn’t negotiate a diplomatic solution without a ceasefire in Gaza.
