“They think they can gain at the expense of the Lebanese sovereignty …. What we did was to express that we are sticking to our right to resistance to defend our country’s sovereignty.”

Qawook was speaking hours after Hezbollah said its fighters retaliated after Israeli forces fired on houses in areas facing the disputed Shebaa farms.

“The Islamic Resistance attacked the Israeli position … with appropriate weapons, scoring direct hits,” a group statement said.

Lebanese security officials were quoted as saying the Hezbollah fired rocket-propelled grenades and mortar shells at the Israeli position.

They said the Hezbollah attack came an hour after Israeli forces opened machine-gun fire on houses in the village of Shebaa, shattering windows and causing damage, the officials said.

In Occupied Jerusalem, an Israeli army spokesman said soldiers had fired a number of warning shots in the air when they saw several shepherds attempting to cross the border into Israel.

Later, the spokesman said, soldiers saw trajectory missiles fired across the border from Lebanon.

However, Qawook stressed that the shepherds were in the Lebanese “liberated” lands.

“What happened is an Israeli aggression, and accordingly the resistance considers protecting civilians … We will not allow the repetition of the violations and we will be on alert,” he stressed.

On the pressure to disarm, Qawook said: “Pressures will not change a thing about our rights. If the American pressures are providing a cover to the Israelis to violate the Lebanese territories, then this is an illusion that would backfire on them.”

Political alliances

Hezbollah’s electoral alliance with groups with different ideologies is aimed at avoiding foreign intervention in Lebanon, said a senior official of the Lebanese group.

“Our alliance in the south [Lebanon] is more a political one than an electoral plan,” said Nabeel Qawook, a senior Hezbollah official in Southern Lebanon, referring to the alliances with Bahia Hariri, the sister of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri, and Osama Sa’ad, who won uncontested.

“We all agree on one thing. We are against foreign intervention that harms Lebanese sovereignty,” he told Gulf News from south Lebanon.

“We the southern people have one message to the Americans: You have no place in Lebanon.”

The group has fielded 13 candidates for the elections starting on May 29 and currently, Hezbollah has 12 seats in the 128-member parliament.

“God willing the number of seats will be 13,” Qawook said. “It is very important that we prove to the Americans that their pressures have not achieved their goal of weaning people away from the resistance.”

Former prime minister Omar Karami said on Friday he did not plan to run in the elections.

“I will boycott the elections and will not run or vote,” Karami told a local TV station. “But this does not mean that I will quit politics.”
Karami, who is a member of parliament since 1991, blasted the elections, which he said were being held on the orders of the United States and France saying that the new parliament would be charged with carrying out the “dirty job” of implementing UN Resolution 1559.

Hariri’s sister and another candidate have won 2 of the 23 seats up for grabs in south Lebanon, raising to 11 the number of seats clinched before a vote is cast.

Bahia Hariri and Osama Sa’ad, both running in Sidon, won by default because no other candidates ran to challenge them, officials said.