Libya has no plans to make peace with Israel, eastern Libyan minister says

PARIS, France - Libya supports South Africa's genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and is opposed to any normalization agreement with Israel, the foreign minister of the unrecognized eastern Libyan government Abdulhadi al-Hweij, told Maariv in an exclusive interview on Wednesday.

"We support the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital," Hweij said in a rare interview with Israeli media. "We are members of the Arab League, the Islamic Cooperation Council, and the African Union. We reject any bilateral agreement with Israel," he added.

Hadji announced his candidacy after the North African country's High National Elections Commission announced plans to hold local elections in 97 municipalities across the country in 2024, noting that the Government of National Unity has yet to provide the budget for this process.

Libya-Israel secret meeting scandal

Hadji's strict anti-Israel rhetoric comes following the scandal involving his counterpart from the recognized central government, Najla Mangoush, who was fired last year after Israel's then-foreign minister Eli Cohen leaked the news of a secret meeting held between the two in Rome.

The event, which had been billed as historic, created an uproar in Tripoli and a diplomatic debacle in Jerusalem. The issue was not the meeting itself, which was held in secret, but a decision by Cohen on Sunday evening to publicize that they had held a face-to-face conversation with an eye toward normalizing ties between the two nations, which have no diplomatic relations.

Mangoush was forced to flee to Turkey to escape public ire.

Speaking to Maariv, Hadji stated that the unrecognized government led by Libyan Field Marshal Khalifa Belqasim Omar Haftar and supported by Russia, harbors "good ties" with the United States, further claiming a warming of relations with Turkey, which engaged in combat with the Haftar government back in 2019.