Negotiations between Israel and Lebanon are beginning to take shape, with Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, set to speak Friday evening with Lebanon’s ambassador to Washington, Nada Hamadeh Moawad, to finalize the terms of talks due to begin formally next week.
A U.S. representative is also expected to take part in the conversation, and according to one Arabic media report, it may be the U.S. ambassador to Beirut.
Qatari channel Al-Araby quoted a Lebanese source as saying the Lebanese ambassador would request a ceasefire as a goodwill gesture to begin the negotiations.
A senior Lebanese official told Reuters as early as Thursday that Lebanon wants a temporary ceasefire for talks with Israel and needs the United States to serve as guarantor for any agreement.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement of direct negotiations with Lebanon came under pressure from President Donald Trump, who told him to scale back the strikes and open direct talks aimed at disarming Hezbollah.
“I spoke to Bibi and he’s going to act in a restrained way,” Trump told NBC on Thursday. “I think we need to be a little bit more restrained.”
Netanyahu said the decision was made “in light of Lebanon’s repeated requests to open direct negotiations with Israel.” The instruction was given at the Cabinet meeting the day before yesterday and, according to the prime minister, “the negotiations will focus on disarming Hezbollah and arranging peaceful relations between Israel and Lebanon.”
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Naim Qassem, Joseph Aoun, Benjamin Netanyahu
(Photo: Petros Karadjias/Reuters, Amir Cohen, Yossi Meir)
In Israel, officials expressed hope that the effort to disarm Hezbollah could succeed through both diplomatic and military means. But in recent weeks, the IDF has acknowledged that this is not a realistic military goal on its own, since the army will not occupy all of Lebanon and go house to house searching for Hezbollah weapons.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has gone further, declaring that Israel plans to expand its territory and take control of the area in southern Lebanon up to the Litani River.
The Lebanese army, meanwhile, is too weak to disarm Hezbollah across the country and has failed to do so sufficiently even in southern Lebanon. Evidence of that can be seen in Hezbollah’s heavy fire from southern Lebanon into Israel in recent days, two months after the Lebanese army explicitly declared it had demilitarized the area south of the Litani.
It remains unclear who could carry out the task Netanyahu has placed first on the agenda. Even if Israel and Lebanon reach an agreement, it is not clear who would be able to enforce it on the ground against a weakened but still large terrorist organization with tens of thousands of armed operatives and heavy weapons.
Since Hezbollah joined the war alongside Iran, Lebanese officials have voiced anger over the Shiite terrorist group’s actions and taken unprecedented steps against it, including declaring that all Hezbollah military activity would be banned and announcing the expulsion of all Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps operatives from Lebanon.
An effort to expel Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon failed, however, after he insisted on remaining with backing from Lebanon’s Shiite community.
Yesterday, in what appeared to be an effort to show it was acting to enforce sovereignty in Beirut as well, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam declared the capital effectively demilitarized.
“To protect the peace, security and property of citizens, the army and security forces are instructed to immediately strengthen the state’s control in Beirut, concentrate weapons exclusively in the hands of the legitimate security forces and strictly enforce the law,” Salam said.