The General Assembly of the House of Representatives approved the extension of the Council’s term for a period of two years, in the session held today, Monday, with 76 deputies voting in favor of the extension, while 41 deputies opposed it, and 4 deputies abstained from voting. The Lebanese Forces, Phalange, and National Movement parties opposed the extension. Representatives of the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc participated in the session, the most prominent of whom was MP Muhammad Raad, who appeared for the first time after Israeli media sites claimed he had been assassinated. Representative George Adwan stressed that “what happened today in the Council, we did everything necessary to prevent it from happening because it is time to change the previous approach, which contradicts the constitution and the concept of institutions.” He believed that "the constitution is not a point of view, and if we applied the concept of the state, we would have spared Lebanon and all its citizens this painful war and its extension." He considered that, “Today the Constitutional Council will be faced with a test. Will it adhere to its jurisprudence or exceed them?” Phalange Party leader MP Sami Gemayel said: “As we said before the session, we were convinced that the elections could not be held in these circumstances and must be postponed. We considered that the best deadline was one year, and for this reason we voted against a two-year extension.” Parliamentary elections in Lebanon were scheduled for next May. In light of the Israeli raids that shook the southern suburb of Beirut and areas in Lebanon, the House of Representatives met in the presence of representatives of the “Loyalty to the Resistance” bloc, headed by MP Muhammad Raad, after Israeli news of an attempt to assassinate him in an attack on the southern suburb of Beirut last Monday, March 1. The extension comes at a time when this scenario was on the table in political circles even before the recent military escalation, against the backdrop of internal disputes over the election law, especially the issue of the sixteenth district regarding expatriate voting. Reports also spoke of Western advice calling for postponing the elections, usually stating that the priority at the current stage should be to confine arms to the state.