Nasrallah agreed to ceasefire before he was killed by Israel: Lebanon minister

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah had agreed to a 21-day ceasefire with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just days before he was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut last week, Lebanon Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib told CNN.
The temporary ceasefire was called for by Biden, Macron and other allies after they met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last month. The ceasefire demand came up after Hezbollah blamed Israel for the numerous explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies used by the group in mid-September.
“We agreed completely. Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire but (after) consulting with Hezbollah. The (Lebanese House) Speaker Mr Nabih Berri consulted with Hezbollah and we informed the Americans and the French about what happened. And they told us that Mr Netanyahu also agreed on the statement that was issued by both (US and French) presidents (Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron),” Habib said.
White House senior advisor Amos Hochstein was set to go to Lebanon to negotiate the ceasefire deal, according to the Lebanese Foreign Minister.
“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 said.
On September 27, Nasrallah was killed in a massive Israeli airstrike on the group’s headquarters in Dahiyeh, a Hezbollah stronghold, in southern Beirut. His death was first announced by Israel and was later confirmed by the Iran-backed group.
A day before his death, a joint statement issued by the US, France, Australia, Canada, the European Union, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the UK and Qatar had called for a 21-day ceasefire, “to give diplomacy a chance to succeed and avoid further escalations across the border”, CNN reported. However, Netanyahu had rejected the deal and said Israel would continue to tackle Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon.
Asked whether the US’s influence was diminishing in the region, Habib, the Lebanese Foreign Minister, said Washington was “always important in this regard”.
“I don’t think we have an alternative. We need the US’s help. Whether we get it or not, we are not sure yet, but [the] US is very important, vital for the ceasefire to happen,” he said.
Israel launched a limited ground offensive in Lebanon on Tuesday following its successful airstrike that killed Nasrallah. Since then, both the Israeli military and Hezbollah fighters have been striking each other.
More than 1,900 people have been killed and over 9,000 wounded in Lebanon in almost a year of cross-border fighting, with most of the deaths occurring in the past two weeks, according to Lebanese government statistics.
The cross-border fighting comes as Israel has been fighting against Hamas in Gaza since October 7 last year, when the Palestinian group launched a surprise attack on the Jewish nation.