Hezbollah’s chief has rejected a conditional truce announced by Lebanese and Israeli envoys, demanding instead a comprehensive ceasefire and full Israeli withdrawal as he threatened northern Israel with new attacks.Naim Qassem’s message came after Lebanese and Israeli representatives in the United States agreed to a conditional ceasefire that Lebanon’s President called the “last chance” for a durable end to the fighting.Lebanon was drawn into the wider Middle East war when Hezbollah attacked Israel to avenge the February 28 killing of Iran’s supreme leader.Hezbollah has rejected the Israel-Lebanon talks, and a previous ceasefire announced on April 17 has been breached daily, with Israeli troops deployed deep inside Lebanese territory and the Iran-backed militants continuing to attack Israel.Qassem urged the government to halt “the farce and humiliation called direct talks”, saying: “The ceasefire must be comprehensive... without the Israeli enemy having the freedom to kill.” He also vowed that “as long as our villages are unsafe - being bombed, destroyed and our people killed - the settlements [north Israel] are unsafe”.The speech followed new Israeli strikes on Lebanon and fresh threats against Beirut by Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz, who said that the army would “at this stage, continue its fire and ground operations... without the return of the population, while continuing to dismantle terrorist infrastructure”.Israeli forces also retained the “freedom of action, with American backing, to strike in Beirut in response to fire on Israeli communities and territory”, he added.In south Lebanon, a United Nations peacekeeper was killed and two others were wounded after a base was hit the previous night.Belgrade said the slain peacekeeper was Serbian, with seven blue helmets now killed since the latest war erupted in March. Israel blamed Hezbollah for his death.Hezbollah is Lebanon’s only militant group that refused to hand over its arsenal after the 1975-1990 civil war, arguing that it was fighting Israel’s occupation of south Lebanon.After Israeli troops withdrew in 2000, calls on Hezbollah to disarm multiplied, with the leadership under President Joseph Aoun taking the firmest stance yet.The Lebanese government has declared Hezbollah’s military activities illegal, and the army was working to disarm the group in areas south of the Litani River near Israel.The war launched by the US and Israel on Iran saw Hezbollah return to the battlefield, launching attacks into Israel while fighting Israeli troops in their deepest incursion into Lebanon in two decades.- AFP