ISRAEL plans to continue striking Hezbollah “with full force” and will not stop until all of its goals are achieved, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday, snubbing global calls for a ceasefire.

Mr Netanyahu spoke as he landed in New York to attend the annual meeting of the United Nations general assembly meeting and as US and European officials pressed for a 21-day halt in fighting between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement to allow time for negotiations.

A short time before his statement, the Israeli military said it had killed Hezbollah drone commander Mohammed Hussein Surour in an air strike on a block of flats in the suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut.

Mr Netanyahu said that Israel’s “policy is clear. We are continuing to strike Hezbollah with full force. And we will not stop until we reach all our goals, chief amongst them the return of the residents of the north securely to their homes.”

Israeli leaders have said they are determined to create the conditions for the tens of thousands of displaced Israelis to go home.

The statement appears to thwart hopes for the success of the international initiative aimed at halting increasingly heavy exchanges of cross-border fire, which have killed hundreds of people in Lebanon and threaten to trigger an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah. 

Instead of a ceasefire, Israel appears to be preparing for a possible ground invasion of Lebanon.

Lebanese journalist Rania Khalek told the Morning Star that this “was not a ceasefire plan at all. It’s a demand for the Lebanese to submit or die. There is no way that Hezbollah will capitulate and decouple from the resistance in Gaza.”

She added: “This is a demand for total submission of the Lebanese whilst Israel continues its carnage.” 

US journalist Eugene Puryear, a host on the Breakthrough News platform, said: “The ‘ceasefire’ proposal is a sham, covering for US complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Hostilities between Lebanon and Israel can be ended immediately if Israel stops the genocide. 

“The proposed US-backed plan is purely designed to reduce pressure on Israel from having to fight on multiple fronts, so they can better continue their destruction of Gaza.

“The lack of an end to the flow of weapons and funds from the US to Israel shows the Biden administration isn’t serious about a true ceasefire and is principally concerned with providing cover for Israel’s brutal policies in Gaza, Lebanon and the entire region.”

Hezbollah has insisted that it will halt its strikes only if there is a ceasefire in Gaza. That appears out of reach, despite months of negotiations.