The head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah organization Hassan Nasrallah warned Tuesday that his militant group’s cross-border shelling of Israel would end only when Israel’s “offensive” on the Gaza Strip ends, saying diplomatic efforts so far to bring about a pause in hostilities along the Lebanese border have failed. they seem to benefit only Israel.

Iran-backed Hezbollah exchanges fire with the Israeli army on Lebanon’s southern border in support of its Palestinian ally, Hamas, which launched a cross-border attack from the Gaza Strip into Israel on October 7 that prompted heavy Israeli bombardment from land, air and sea.

Sage Hassan Nasrallah said his organization would stop the firefight only if a full cease fire for Gaza.

“On that day, when the shooting stops in Gaza, we will stop the shooting in the south,” he said in a televised address.

He said many foreign “delegations” traveled to Beirut with “proposals” to end hostilities in southern Lebanon, but said they appeared to “only have one goal, which is: the security of Israel, the protection of Israel.”

The foreign ministers of France, Britain and other countries have traveled to Lebanon in recent weeks in an effort to bring calm to the border.

France’s foreign minister delivered a written proposal to Beirut calling on fighters, including those from Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit, to withdraw 10 km. from the border, among other measures, according to a document seen by Reuters.

Without elaborating on the French proposal, Nasrallah said a delegation “presented a document as a mediator”.

“You read the document — there is nothing. There is Israel’s security,” he said.

Nasrallah explained that if Israel expands the war further into Lebanon, his organization will do the same.

Cross-border shelling has already killed around 200 people in Lebanon, including at least 170 Hezbollah fighters, as well as 10 Israeli soldiers and five Israeli civilians. They have also displaced tens of thousands of people in each country.

Nasrallah warned that if Israel provokes a war against Lebanon, the displaced from its northern part “they won’t come back” in their homes, and that officials should in this case “prepare shelters, hotels, schools and counter-tents for two million displaced people from northern” Israel.