Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Wednesday that any ceasefire agreement in Lebanon should allow his country “freedom of action” against Hezbollah.
“In any agreement we conclude, we must preserve our freedom of action in the event of violations,” Mr. Saar said in Jerusalem in a speech to foreign ambassadors, while American envoy Amos Hochstein is expected in Israel to evoke an American truce proposal.
“Unfortunately, Lebanon is a failed state. But we cannot pay with our security, with the security of our citizens, the price for their lack of sovereignty or concessions on their sovereignty,” Mr. Saar said.
“We will need to be able to act in time, before problems develop,” he added.
A little earlier in Beirut, the American envoy Amos Hochstein reported “additional progress”, after his second meeting in two days with the President of the Lebanese Parliament, Nabih Berri, who liaises with Hezbollah, a movement supported by Iran.
Mr. Hochstein is trying to obtain the approval of both parties for an American plan providing for a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon, on the basis of UN resolution 1701 which put an end to the previous one. war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
For its part, Israel, which insists that any possible agreement guarantees the distancing of Hezbollah from the Israeli-Lebanese border, is blowing hot and cold around a cease-fire.
On October 8, 2023, the day after Hamas' unprecedented attack on Israeli soil that sparked the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah launched a “front of support” for the Palestinian Islamist movement by firing rockets. almost daily in northern Israel.
For months, relatively small-scale cross-border clashes between the Israeli army and Shiite movement fighters have displaced tens of thousands of residents across the dividing line between Israel and Lebanon. .
Saying it wanted to prevent Hezbollah from carrying out attacks on its soil and with the stated aim of allowing the safe return home of some 60,000 inhabitants of the north of the country, Israel launched an intense bombing campaign in Lebanon on September 23, and seven days later launched a ground offensive in the south of the country.
With AFP
