Washington: Secretary of State Marco Rubio joined Israel and Lebanon’s ambassadors to the US Friday to announce a framework agreement that was described as a first step towards peace following months of conflict between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
The agreement does not include Hezbollah and prompted one of the group’s officials in Lebanon to warn of civil war. The US State Department said the framework establishes a process for dismantling Hezbollah and for Lebanon to regain territory that was taken by Israeli forces as they battled the militant group.
The US will facilitate a newly created “Military Coordination Group for Lebanon” to implement the framework, the State Department said, while committing USD 100 million in humanitarian assistance.
“For Lebanon, this Framework provides a genuine pathway out of a long crisis,” the State Department said. “For Israel, it creates a verifiable path to removing the persistent threat on its northern border.”
Friday’s agreement was signed in front of Rubio in Washington by Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, and Nada Hamadeh Moawad, the Lebanese ambassador to the United States.
Leiter said the final destination of the framework is peace between the two countries.
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“Our language is we want to embrace Lebanon,” he said. “Our language is we want to get in our car in Tel Aviv and take a drive up to Beirut, and we want Beirut to come down and take a drive to Tel Aviv. That’s where we’re going. That’s where we want to go.”
Leiter said that will depend on Hezbollah being disarmed and dismantled, which will allow Israel to withdraw and Lebanon to “regain its full sovereignty.”
“So it really depends on the Lebanese army,” Leiter said. “It depends on the support the Lebanese army gets from the US. And we think it’s going to be solid.”
Moawad said the framework “is a first step on the road to restoring Lebanese sovereignty and territorial integrity, securing a permanent and final cessation of hostilities, enabling our people to go back to their land and allowing all Lebanese to live in peace, security and prosperity.”
Hezbollah official says group won’t give up weapons
The latest conflict began when Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel days after Israel and the US launched their war on Iran on February 28. Israel invaded Lebanon and has expanded its control.
More than 4,000 people in Lebanon have been killed in Israeli strikes since March. At least 37 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Lebanon or northern Israel during the fighting.
Lebanese officials have said that securing a withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon is a top priority for them in the negotiations, while Israeli officials have prioritised the disarmament of the Iran-backed Hezbollah.
The talks between Israel and Lebanon were separate from the interim deal that was signed last week by the leaders of the US and Iran to end the fighting in the Islamic Republic. That agreement set a 60-day period for negotiations on key issues, including the future of Tehran’s nuclear programme amid concerns that Iran wants to use it for military purposes, a claim the country denies.
The Lebanese government had been wary of having Iran negotiate on its behalf, and Lebanon launched its own direct negotiations with Israel after the outbreak of the latest Israel-Hezbollah war. Hezbollah was not part of the talks, which resulted in several ceasefire agreements that were never implemented on the ground.
Hezbollah is unlikely to agree to any plan that would include its disarmament throughout the country. The group has maintained that it is only required by previous agreements and UN resolutions to disarm in the area south of the Litani River, near Lebanon’s border with Israel.
Hassan Fadlallah, a member of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, reiterated the group’s stance on Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV that it rejects Lebanon’s direct negotiations with Israel and that it will not give up its weapons.
Fadlallah said Lebanese authorities “will not be able to enforce the agreement signed in Washington unless they go, with American support, to civil war.” He also called the agreement in Washington “an attempt to derail the Islamabad process,” referring to the US-Iran negotiations.
Israel establishes ‘pilot zones’ for Lebanon
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said in a statement that the agreement “aims to achieve an Israeli withdrawal from all Lebanese territory, restore state sovereignty over it, and facilitate the return of its citizens” and that under it Lebanon is obligated to “extend the authority of the Lebanese state, through its armed forces, over all its territory.”
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun had told a visiting British parliamentary delegation on Wednesday that a proposal for “pilot zones” where the Lebanese army is supposed to take exclusive control of the territory as Israeli troops will withdraw was “under discussion pending approval from the Israeli side.”
Israel’s direct negotiations with Lebanon include discussions about the redeployment of Israeli forces after southern Lebanon is cleared of Hezbollah infrastructure and Hezbollah has disarmed, said an Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video on Friday that the framework is a “great achievement” for Israel.
“The most important thing, first and foremost, is that Israel will remain in the security zone in southern Lebanon,” he said. “This is a major achievement, and we will maintain it as long as Hezbollah has not been disarmed and as long as it continues to pose a threat to the State of Israel.”
Netanyahu said that Israel is allowing the Lebanese army to begin preparing to take control of territory, while the Israeli military is establishing two pilot zones.
“A small part of it is within the expanded security zone that we secured over the past two weeks and which, the IDF has made absolutely clear, it does not need,” Netanyahu said. “In other words, we are maintaining the original security zone at all times, outside the range of anti-tank missiles.
