First talks held since inking of MOU, with partial IDF withdrawal from south Lebanon said under discussion; Hezbollah chief says timetable must be set for full pullout.
Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter laid into US President Donald Trump’s administration over its willingness to include the ceasefire in Lebanon as part of a memorandum of understanding Washington inked last week with Tehran, as Beirut and Jerusalem kicked off a fifth round of negotiations at the US State Department in Washington on Tuesday. The session, the first held after Iran and the US signed their MOU, was set to focus on both political and security issues before splitting off into separate sessions on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. According to Channel 13, an issue being discussed at Tuesday’s meeting was a planned partial Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon.
An unnamed senior official was quoted by the network as saying the IDF “captured territory in recent days for the purpose of negotiations, to then withdraw from them.” Under a planned pilot program agreed to by Jerusalem and Beirut earlier this month, the IDF would leave certain areas of southern Lebanon and hand them over to the control of the Lebanese army. Israel and Lebanon were represented at the talks by their respective ambassadors in Washington, while State Department Counselor Dan Holler and Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Dan Zimmerman represented the US.
But Leiter was highly critical of the negotiations under the current context, declaring in a Hebrew statement as the talks began that “we are in a train wreck.” The talks were set up by the Trump administration specifically to detach Lebanon from the ongoing Iran conflict, as Tehran sought to secure an agreement with the US that also protected its Hezbollah proxy. The direct Israel-Lebanon channel has been used to negotiate several ceasefires in Lebanon in recent months. But those truces barely held at all, as Beirut has been unable to rein in the terror group, and as Israel’s efforts to disarm it exclusively through military means have failed as well. (Read More)
