Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea has congratulated all Lebanese on the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, saying that “over the past 50 years, the regime of Hafez and Bashar al-Assad was the biggest obstacle to the building of a state in Lebanon.”

The Israeli army released Monday two brothers it had detained Sunday near the Shebaa Farms.

The brothers Samer and Sameer Sinan from the town of Ain Qinya were detained as they harvested olives in al-Majidiya near the Shebaa Farms.

Kataeb leader MP Sami Gemayel said that Hezbollah has surrendered and south Lebanon was destroyed in only 10 days of Israeli strikes.

Gemayel demanded Hezbollah be disarmed, stressing that the group has stopped being a Lebanese "resistance" movement since it entered Syria, in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil said he supports Hezbollah in defending Lebanon but not in exposing it, calling for a full implementation of the ceasefire with Israel and for keeping Lebanon away from regional conflicts.

"We have lost the deterrence equation but Israel today cannot stroll in Lebanon the way it did in 1982," Bassil said in a televised interview. "There is neither defeat nor victory, but the Shiites now know that they cannot bet on other arenas and cannot continue with wrong choices."

Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem said Thursday that his Iranian-backed group, an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, would be by Damascus’ side as Islamist-led rebels press a sweeping offensive.

The Development and Liberation parliamentary bloc led by Speaker Nabih Berri on Thursday lauded caretaker PM Najib Mikati’s call for holding a Cabinet session in the southern city of Tyre.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Thursday described the ceasefire agreement reached with Israel as “a sort of an executive mechanism for the implementation of Resolution 1701.”

“Our priority is to reach long-term stability and the election of a president,” Mikati added.

The co-chair of the ceasefire monitoring mechanism, U.S. Maj. Gen. Jasper Jeffers, held talks Thursday with Speaker Nabih Berri.

Jeffers was accompanied by a U.S. military delegation and U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Lisa Johnson.

Speaker Nabih Berri, who had called for parliament to convene to elect a president next month, is optimistic that a president will be elected on January 9, a prominent parliamentary source told Kuwaiti newspaper al-Anbaa.

The source said, in remarks published Thursday, the vote would likely be held in open sessions. "If that wasn't Berri's intention, he wouldn't have invited ambassadors to the session."

Israeli artillery shells targeted Lebanese Civil Defense crews as they were removing rubble and searching for bodies in Naqoura on Thursday.