Israel keeps grip on Lebanon as Beirut eyes Hezbollah-free zone

JERUSALEM – The Israeli and Lebanese governments are discussing locations for US-proposed areas in southern Lebanon where the Beirut government could prove its ability to keep out Hezbollah.

The negotiations held in Washington over recent weeks have been galvanised by the interim peace accord between the US and Iran. The Trump administration has resisted Tehran’s demand that those separate talks between the US and Iran include an end to Israeli operations against Hezbollah. Even so, US officials have urged its ally Israel to show restraint and pursue a parallel peace with Lebanon.

An Israeli official who requested anonymity said the latest round of talks with Lebanon, which began on June 23 and were due to conclude on June 25, had been dogged by disagreement over geography.

The Lebanese government wants at least some of the so-called pilot areas to be within a 10km-deep buffer zone along the border with Israel, now patrolled by the Israel Defense Force (IDF) and depopulated of civilians, the official said.

Israel has rejected that idea, saying Beirut can deploy the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) elsewhere south of the Litani River – the demarcation of lands that has long been the Hezbollah heartland. 

“The Lebanese army has no shortage of places where it can carry out demilitarisation operations,” Bezalel Smotrich, a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security Cabinet, told Israel’s Army Radio on June 23.

The Lebanese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On June 25, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said an initial Israeli-Lebanese agreement was expected soon.

According to a second Israeli official, the US would provide training and monitoring for the LAF to ensure Hezbollah, which Israeli forces have dislodged from much of southern Lebanon, does not re-enter a pilot zone.

Israel says it will keep the buffer zone – and prevent displaced Lebanese from returning there – as long as Iran-backed Hezbollah, which is deemed a terrorist group by the US, continues to pose a threat.

The idea of the pilot zones arose in previous Israeli-Lebanese talks, before the US-Iran memorandum of understanding was signed.

Eli Cohen, another Israeli security Cabinet member, said the IDF has carried out what he described as minor redeployments in southern Lebanon to improve defensive positions.

US President Donald Trump has in recent weeks displayed increasing frustration with Netanyahu’s actions.

“I get problems solved real fast, including with Bibi,” Trump told reporters earlier this week, using a common nickname for Netanyahu.

Israel will not withdraw troops “even if Trump or any other US official were to ask”, Cohen said.

“We would respond, ‘Don’t,’” he told Channel 14 TV. BLOOMBERG