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Israel and Lebanon agreed on Wednesday, June 3, after two days of talks in Washington, to condition a ceasefire on a “complete cessation” of Hezbollah fire and to create “pilot zones” under the control of the Lebanese army.
This development comes after new Israeli strikes which left at least 10 dead on Wednesday in Lebanon and after new shots claimed by Hezbollah against Israel, which threatened to strike the southern suburbs of Beirut in the event of an attack on its territory.
Thursday morning, the infiltration of an aircraft deemed hostile led the Israeli army to sound the alert in Kfar Yuval, a village in northern Israel. “A suspicious aerial target has been identified. The incident is over. No injuries have been reported,” the army wrote on social networks, without further details.
“At the end of the negotiations carried out under the aegis of the United States, Israel and Lebanon have agreed to the implementation of a ceasefire”, we can read in a joint declaration between the three parties to the Washington negotiations.
Hezbollah rejects these discussions
It will be subject to “the complete cessation of Hezbollah fire” – which rejects these discussions – and the “evacuation” of all members of the Lebanese movement from the sector located south of the Litani River, around thirty kilometers from the border with Israel, it was added.
The parties also “agreed to rapidly advance the establishment of pilot zones in which the Lebanese Armed Forces will exercise exclusive control over the territory, to the exclusion of all non-state actors”, a reference to Hezbollah, according to the same source.
Israel and Lebanon also agreed to participate in a new session of talks the week of June 22 with a view to a “comprehensive agreement,” the statement added. This is the fourth time that delegations from the two countries, which do not maintain diplomatic relations, have met in Washington for direct negotiations.
Ceasefire flouted
A ceasefire is supposed to be in force between Israel and Hezbollah since April 17 but it has been widely flouted. And Israel has intensified and expanded its offensive in recent days, raising risks that these battles will contribute to a new conflagration of the war in the Middle East at a time when negotiations between Washington and Tehran are slipping.
On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump, who this week had a heated exchange with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the subject, insisted on “separating” discussions on Lebanon from those on Iran.
Tehran considers that it is one and the same subject, the head of diplomacy Abbas Araghchi warning that any attack against the Lebanese capital would lead to “a large-scale resumption of the war” in the region.
According to the Lebanese authorities, Hezbollah had accepted on Monday an American proposal initially providing that Israel refrain from striking the suburbs of Beirut in exchange for the movement’s commitment to stop its attacks on Israel. But a senior official of the formation indicated Tuesday to the AFP that his group would not accept a “partial ceasefire.”
Rescue workers killed
Hezbollah said on Wednesday that it had targeted soldiers in northern Israel. And early Thursday, the pro-Iranian movement claimed to have launched rockets against the Israeli army in Al-Qantara, in southern Lebanon, then to have targeted with two drones an Israeli command post located near the historic castle of Chqif, in southern Lebanon.
Wednesday morning, an Israeli strike targeted Khalde, at the southern entrance to the capital, according to the National Information Agency (ANI, official). Other bombings followed in the south of the country, killing one soldier and injuring two others, while four Syrians and two Palestinians were killed near Tyre, a thousand-year-old coastal city that has been shelled for several days, according to the authorities.
In the same region, an Israeli strike “directly” targeted an ambulance, killing two rescue workers and seriously injuring a third, the Health Ministry announced.
On the night of Wednesday to Thursday, ANI announced that a rescuer was killed and another injured in a new Israeli attack in Zebdine, in the district of Nabatieh, bringing to at least 130 the number of rescuers and medical personnel killed since the start of the war.
Israeli strikes have killed 3,516 people since March 2, the start of the war in Lebanon, and have displaced more than a million, according to the authorities. On the Israeli side, 26 soldiers and a civilian contractor were killed in Lebanon.
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