Rome, 15 June (LaPresse) – "Trump’s agreement does not bind us. Israel is not subject to the United States and we are an independent and sovereign nation! Our duty is to the citizens of Israel, to the soldiers of the Israel Defence Forces and to the Jewish people, as well as to the Jews persecuted and killed over thousands of years of exile: to guarantee the security of Jews in the Land of Israel. Every time we have yielded to international pressure at the expense of Israel’s security, we have paid a price in blood, with interest. This was the case with the Oslo Accords, it was the case with the 2006 Lebanon agreement, and it has been the case in every period of restraint in Gaza that has blown up in our faces.” This was written on X by the Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir. “My position is clear,” he added, “we are not partners in this agreement, which does not guarantee our security and does not bind us in any way. We must not compromise on anything other than the dismantling of Hezbollah; we must not withdraw from any territory that our fighters have conquered and cleared of terrorist infrastructure; we must not return to a situation where thousands of terrorists sit on the fences of the northern settlements; and we certainly must not remain silent for a single moment in the face of fire directed against the State of Israel." ‘We must be clear: any launch of a drone or missile from Lebanon towards Israel will result in an Israeli strike. This was the balance of deterrence just a few months ago, and we must not relinquish it in any way,’ he concluded.