ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Israel’s newly appointed defense minister on Tuesday said there would be “no ceasefire” in Lebanon until their goals are achieved, adding that Israel will press on with strikes on alleged Hezbollah positions in the neighboring country.

"In Lebanon, there will be no ceasefire and there will be no respite,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a post on social media platform X following a meeting with Israeli military commanders. "We will continue to hit Hezbollah with full force until the goals of the war are achieved.”

Katz, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, wrote, "Israel will not agree to any arrangement that does not guarantee Israel's right to enforce and prevent terrorism on its own.”

Tel Aviv’s goals, according to the minister, are "disarming Hezbollah and pushing them beyond the Litani River and returning the residents of the north safely to their homes.”

Katz’s comments come a day after leaders of Islamic and Arab countries gathered in Riyadh for a summit, unanimously calling for a halt to Israel’s aggressions on Lebanon and Gaza and calling for an urgent ceasefire.

Israel has been intensively pounding Lebanon since late September, after a year of sporadic cross-border fire.

In its latest attacks, the Israeli military killed at least eight people in Ain Yaacoub, a northernmost village in Lebanon, after leveling a residential building to the ground.

Over 1.3 million people have been displaced from their homes since the Israel-Hezbollah conflict began. Of this number, 400,000 people have been displaced to neighboring countries, according to figures from the government in Beirut and the UN.

In addition to the large displacement rate, over 3,000 people have been killed in Lebanon due to the war since October 2023.

Israel’s war on Lebanon erupted as a result of Hezbollah’s cross-border exchanges of fire in support of Hamas following the latter’s October 7 attacks on Israel.