Netanyahu says wants to 'work together' with Lebanon to 'get rid of Hezbollah'
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel has destroyed "more than 90%" of Hezbollah's rockets and ballistic missiles, but noted that that "still leaves them with thousands of rockets and some ballistic missiles."
"And that's still a big issue. They still hold Lebanon hostage ... Hezbollah is basically a proxy of Iran. Iran holds Lebanon. We have no quarrel with Lebanon. We could make peace with Lebanon and want to make peace with them tomorrow, no, yesterday. But you have this foreign body, this-- this-- Ira-- Iranian-backed terrorist organization that hijacked the country," Netanyahu said in an interview with U.S. TV network CBS.
Netanyahu added that the Lebanese also want to get rid of Hezbollah "because they want freedom."
"Of course they want to be free. But they've not shown yet the capacity to fight them. What we're talking to them about is, 'How do we work together to militarily and politically, possibly splitting up the work, to get rid of Hezbollah?' It's not yet been done. It has to be done as well," Netanyahu added.
He said that Iran wants Hezbollah to "stay there and continue to torture Lebanon, continue to hold its people hostage."
He added that if the Iranian regime is "indeed weakened or possibly toppled, I think it's the end of Hezbollah, it's the end of Hamas, it's probably the end of the Houthis, because the whole scaffolding of the terrorist proxy network that Iran built collapses if the regime in Iran collapses."
"Now, that's not guaranteed. But the weakening of that regime weakens the proxies as well. Still a long haul. You know, it's not something that's gonna be done tomorrow," Netanyahu went on to say.
Source: Naharnet
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