Nasrallah and Netanyahu agree to cease before Israel deposes Hezbollah leader

BEIRUT – Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said in an interview with CNN that Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to a temporary ceasefire before Israel killed Nasrallah in a large plane in Beirut.

“(The United States) also agreed to the Biden-Macron statement calling for a truce to be implemented for 21 days,” Bou Habib told CNN’s Christine Amanpour.

“And they told us that Netanyahu agreed to this. So we got Hezbollah’s agreement on that as well. You know what happened since then,” he explained.

Bou Habib, who is currently in New York after the UN General Assembly in September, said that the cease-fire agreement​​​​​​was confirmed before Israel launched a major airstrike on the outskirts of south Beirut, killing Nasrallah and destroying entire buildings.

Before Israel killed Nasrallah, the United States (US) and France said last Wednesday they were releasing a statement urging a 21-day temporary ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel, after a week of Israel carrying out more airstrikes in Lebanon.

US officials said both sides had communicated about the statement, and were confident that a ceasefire would be reached.

However, the next day Netanyahu publicly rejected the ceasefire and on Friday Israel killed Nasrallah.

The revelations from Bou Habib could provide insight into how Israel killed Nasrallah, who survived several Israeli assassination attempts over the decades.

Another Reuters report published on Wednesday said Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei sent an envoy to warn Nasrallah that Israel planned to kill him.

The ambassador, Iran’s top commander Abbas Nilforoushan, was also killed in an Israeli strike on Friday 27 September.