WASHINGTON: The United States will host new talks Thursday between Israel and Lebanon aimed at encouraging an agreement, a US official told AFP, after the start of a shaky US-brokered ceasefire.
The talks will take place at the State Department in Washington, again at the level of ambassadors.
“We will continue to facilitate direct, good-faith discussions between the two governments,” the State Department official said Monday on customary condition of anonymity.
The ambassadors of Israel and Lebanon, which have no diplomatic relations, met on April 14 at the State Department.
Three days later, President Donald Trump announced a 10-day truce pausing the war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Shia armed movement that has fired rockets in response to the Israeli-US attack on its patron Iran.
Sporadic violence has continued despite the truce.
WATCH: Buildings and cars lie destroyed in Nabatieh, southern Lebanon, as residents gather in the rubble and workers begin repairing damaged shops after six weeks of Israeli strikes
Israel says applying diplomatic, military pressure to disarm Hezbollah
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Tuesday that his country’s campaign in Lebanon relied both on military and diplomatic pressure to disarm Iran-allied Hezbollah.
“The overarching goal of the campaign in Lebanon is to disarm Hezbollah and remove the threat to the northern communities (of Israel), through a combination of military and diplomatic measures,” Katz said during a ceremony marking Israel’s national day of remembrance for fallen soldiers and victims of terror.
Though a truce between Israel and Lebanon took effect Friday, Israeli troops are still present and actively fighting Hezbollah militants in Lebanon’s south, with Katz saying Sunday that troops would use “full force” if threatened.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said Monday that planned talks with Israel aim to end hostilities and the occupation in the south, despite the rejection of negotiations by Hezbollah and its supporters.
“The choice to negotiate aims to stop hostilities, end the Israeli occupation of southern regions and deploy the (Lebanese) army all the way to the internationally recognized southern borders” with Israel, Aoun said in a statement on Monday.
The truce in Lebanon was also one of Iran’s conditions for resuming talks with Washington to extend their separate ceasefire and work out the terms of a lasting peace.
Aoun’s moves on Monday came after a forceful address to the nation Friday night in which he said “we negotiate for ourselves... we are no longer a pawn in anyone’s game, nor an arena for anyone’s wars, and we never will be again.”
Iran-backed Hezbollah is not part of the talks and its supporters strongly oppose Lebanon-Israel negotiations.
Lebanon is officially at war with Israel and has no diplomatic relations with its southern neighbor.
Aoun faces backlash
On the road to Beirut’s international airport, in the southern suburbs where Hezbollah holds sway, AFP images showed fresh graffiti attacking Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam on Monday following their endorsements of negotiations.
“Joseph is a traitor, Nawaf is a turncoat,” one graffiti, the names sprayed over in black, read, in reference to the president and premier.
“Dealing with Israel is forbidden... no to normalization,” another graffiti read.
Senior Hezbollah official Mahmud Qamati blasted Aoun on Saturday, saying “defeated, you go to the Israelis and Americans, let’s see what you will get out of it.”
Hezbollah supporters also heaped scorn on Aoun on social media.
“You’re going to hand over the south after two days of negotiations?” one user posted on X, “we won’t let you” sign an agreement.
“After all our sacrifices this guy wants to speak for us?,” another user, whose profile picture shows Aoun and Salam and reads “they do not represent me,” posted on X.
Israeli attacks killed nearly 2,300 people and forced over a million to flee their homes, Lebanese authorities said, since Hezbollah dragged the country into the Middle East war last month.
Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah told AFP Monday “the people will not accept that their sacrifices be squandered.”
“They offered their sons and shed this blood and they will never accept... that these achievements be compromised.”
“Any outcome of direct negotiations cannot imposed on these people who made these sacrifices.”
‘I am full of hope’
Aoun on Monday named former Lebanese ambassador to Washington Simon Karam to head the negotiations with Israel.
He said “no one will share this task with Lebanon or take its place,” adding that the Israel-Lebanon talks will be “separate from any other negotiations,” in an implicit reference to the US-Iran diplomacy.
“Lebanon is facing two options: either the continuation of the war, with all its humanitarian, social, economic, and sovereign repercussions, or negotiations to put an end to this war and achieve lasting stability,” he said.
“I have chosen negotiations, and I am full of hope that we will be able to save Lebanon,” Aoun said.
