Israel conveyed to the Lebanese government that it won’t stop striking Hezbollah despite the recent first civilian-level meeting between the countries’ representatives, the Lebanese newspaper Ad-Diyar reported on Monday.
After Israel escalated strikes and signaling it was preparing for a potential new ground operation in recent weeks, the U.S. pressured Beirut and Jerusalem to send civilian representatives for the first non-military talks between the two sides in decades.
Despite this, Israel emphasized this won’t mean a stop to the airstrikes, most of which were aimed at preventing Hezbollah from rearming.
While Jerusalem reportedly showed itself ready to give negotiations a chance, the report added that senior Lebanese officials were told that the deadline for deciding the fate of Hezbollah’s weapons north of the Litani River would come at the beginning of next year.
If the Lebanese government has not resolved the issue by that time, Israel “will have a green light to continue the process of eliminating Hezbollah’s military wing,” according to Ad-Diyar.
After the weakening of Hezbollah at the hands of the IDF last year, the U.S. tied support for reconstruction to a demand to disarm the terror group. The Lebanese government instructed its military to establish a monopoly on weapons in the country, which would include disarming the terror group.
However, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) have so far focused on the area south of the Litani River, leaving the Iran-backed group’s strategic weapon depots in Beirut and the Bekaa Valley virtually untouched.
Israel has warned that some officers in the LAF are cooperating with Hezbollah, and that the group is rearming faster than the military is able to confiscate its weapons.
The Lebanese government, meanwhile, has said it will complete the LAF’s deployment south of the Litani by the end of the year and has demanded, as a condition for continuing efforts to disarm Hezbollah, that Israel withdraw from the five outposts it still holds on Lebanese territory.
Nabih Berri, the powerful Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament and Shiite ally of Hezbollah, told the newspaper Al-Akhbar that the mission of Lebanon’s civilian envoy Simon Karam, who negotiated with Israel last week, “is supposed to yield clear results within weeks.”
“The United States must take an initiative that will convince Israel to abide by the agreement through stopping the strikes, releasing prisoners, and withdrawing from the occupied areas. If these things are not achieved, the negotiations will be meaningless,” Berri said.
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