Hezbollah to remain active after ceasefire, lawmaker says

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BEIRUT (Reuters) -Hezbollah will remain active after its war with Israel ends, including by helping displaced Lebanese return to their villages and rebuilding areas destroyed by Israeli strikes, senior Hezbollah official Hassan Fadlallah said on Tuesday.

“From now, we confirm that the Resistance (Hezbollah) will remain, will continue, will carry on,” Fadlallah, who is also a member of Lebanon’s parliament, told Reuters in an interview.

“And the proof of that is that when Israel’s aggression against Lebanon ends, then the Resistance that was fighting in the battlefield will itself be working to help its people to return (home) and to rebuild,” he said.

Fadlallah said that Hezbollah’s health, social and developmental institutions were prepared “for the day after” and would coordinate with the Lebanese state to shelter the displaced, remove rubble from damaged areas, bury victims and help with reconstruction.

That was all contingent on a ceasefire, which was expected to be announced later on Tuesday evening.

Lebanon was facing “dangerous, sensitive hours” until that announcement comes, Fadlallah said.

“We are in dangerous and sensitive hours because we have become accustomed to the Israeli entity – when there is a phase of an end to hostilities, it intensifies its attacks on Lebanese areas. That is what we are seeing in these hours,” he said.

Fadlallah was referring to the Israeli air force’s intensified strikes on Tuesday afternoon on Beirut and its southern suburbs. In the hours after he spoke to Reuters, the Israeli military issued its first evacuation orders for four neighbourhoods in central Beirut, a major escalation.

(Reporting by Laila Bassam; Writing by Maya GebeilyEditing by Peter Graff, William Maclean)