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The Israeli army launched an offensive to retake a key southern Lebanese city from Hezbollah fighters holed up inside on Monday, ending its war with the Iran-backed group on the eve of historic talks between Israeli and Lebanese government officials.
As the ambassadors of Lebanon and Israel to the United States meet on Tuesday in Washington, Lebanon’s foreign minister said Beirut will use face-to-face talks to press for an end to a war that has complicated broader negotiations to end the conflict in the Middle East.
But the vision of this meeting – a rare, face-to-face meeting between countries officially at war – has been overshadowed, as Israel says it will not discuss the issue of ending violence while Hezbollah opposes talks with Israel, reflecting the political tension in Lebanon.
Down in southern Lebanon, Israeli forces have completed encircling the town of Bint Jbeil across the border and have begun ground attacks, said a spokesman for the Israeli military and Lebanese security sources.
Lebanese sources said the trapped Hezbollah fighters were ready to fight to the death, citing the strategic and strategic importance of Bint Jbeil, Hezbollah’s stronghold, the provincial capital, and the gateway to nearby villages.
An Israeli military official said full control of Bint Jbeil would be achieved in a few days, and that only a small number of soldiers remained in the area.
On Sunday, Hezbollah said it attacked Israeli forces in and around Bint Jbeil
A foreign security official based in Lebanon said capturing Bint Jbeil would give Israel better control over Lebanon’s entire southeastern border, leaving the area west of the border, which is heavily forested and difficult to clear.
Hezbollah opened fire on Israel in support of Tehran on March 2, beginning an Israeli offensive that Lebanese authorities say has killed more than 2,000 people and forced more than a million people from their homes.
Israel says it intends to take southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, which meets the Mediterranean about 30 kilometers from the Israeli border.
Ongoing attacks in Lebanon
Israel and the US said the campaign against Hezbollah was not part of the fragile Iran-US deal to stop it, although Pakistan’s prime minister, a key negotiator, said the deal would include Lebanon.
Although the war in Lebanon has not stopped, Israel has not launched airstrikes on Beirut since Wednesday, when it struck the capital in an attack that killed hundreds of people across the country.
The US ambassador to Lebanon, Michel Issa, will host Tuesday’s meeting in Washington between Israeli ambassador Yechiel Leiter and his Lebanese counterpart Nada Hamadeh Moawad.
Lebanon’s Culture Minister Ghassan Salameh, speaking in an interview with Lebanese broadcaster Al Jadeed on Sunday, said that seeking an end to the conflict is the only important issue that Moawad is authorized to discuss.
Lebanon was not included in the ceasefire agreement between the US and Iran, but members of the diaspora here in Canada are still hoping for peace. Jodie Applewaithe reports.
Israel’s embassy in Washington said last week that the talks would be the start of “formal peace talks” and that Israel had refused to negotiate with Hezbollah on an end to violence.
Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Youssef Raggi, who is a member of a group that strongly opposes the Hezbollah Lebanese Forces, said that Lebanon is trying to reach an agreement to end the fighting through direct negotiations.
In a phone call with German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, Raggi said that “establishing this song effectively stopped the division between the Lebanese file and the Iranian song,” Raggi wrote in X.
A senior Lebanese political source said the talks were proceeding without national consensus because both Hezbollah and its Shi’ite Muslim counterpart, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, opposed the talks before the ceasefire. Another source who knows their position well said that Lebanon should not sit at the table with Israel while “our people are being killed.”
