Rare maritime talks do not mean normalization with Israel: Hezbollah

The Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement says a UN-brokered indirect maritime negotiations with Israel do not signify "reconciliation" or "normalization" with the Zionist entity.

Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc said in a statement on Thursday that the talks have "absolutely nothing to do with either any reconciliation with the Zionist enemy... or policies of normalization recently adopted... by Arab states."

"Defining the coordinates of national sovereignty is the responsibility of the Lebanese state," it said in a statement.

Lebanon's parliament speaker Nabih Berri last week announced the talks would go ahead.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric has recently said Lebanon's maritime border talks, to be held at the headquarters of the UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL in the southern town of Naqoura, will start around mid-October.

The issue of the sea frontier is especially sensitive as Lebanon hopes to continue exploring for oil and gas in a part of the Mediterranean.

In February 2018, Lebanon signed its first contract for offshore drilling for oil and gas in two blocks in the Mediterranean with a consortium comprising energy giants Total, ENI and Novatek.

Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem on Monday strongly condemned normalization with the regime of Israel as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause, emphasizing that Arab rulers scrambling to establish diplomatic ties with the Tel Aviv regime have reaped nothing but humiliation and disgrace.

He underlined that Palestinians are at the vanguard of the resistance front seeking to liberate al-Quds, calling for support for them.

MG