Hizb Allah - the Islamist resistance group based in Lebanon - has denied it was attempting to wreck the Israeli-Palestinian truce.
In an interview with Reuters news agency, the group's Deputy Secretary-General Shaikh Naim Qasim also said that disarming its fighters as demanded by a UN resolution, was not possible "now or in the future".
Qasim termed baseless reports that Hizb Allah was trying to recruit Palestinian resistance fighters to derail the latest peace efforts in the Middle East.
Israeli plot
"They show the existence of an Israeli cell working to spread such ideas before Israeli actions to destroy the truce by repeated aggressions against the Palestinians," he said.
He said Hizb Allah propounded a Palestinian right to resist Israeli occupation of their land, by which the group usually means both Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip that the Israelis seized in the 1967 war.
"When we speak of support, it is moral support that does not interfere in Palestinian daily life," Qasim said.
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"Giving up these weapons is not on the table"
Shaikh Qasim,
Deputy Secretary-General,
Hizb Allah |
Qasim said Hizb Allah hoped the European Union would resist US pressure to put the group on a list of terrorist groups.
"That, in my belief, would harm the EU's credibility in the Middle East because it would make its position unacceptable - it would be the same as the American position, which is hated in the Arab and Islamic world," he said.
Qasim also said disarming Hizb Allah fighters was not up for discussion.
"Hizb Allah's arms are the arms of resistance taken up for the Lebanese people and they liberated the south and will liberate the Shebaa Farms and confront the Israeli danger that is crouching over the region," he said.
"Giving up these weapons is not on the table."