Direct negotiations between Israel and Lebanon will begin next week, a senior Israeli official has confirmed, a landmark development that marks the first formal talks between the two countries in decades.
The opening meeting will take place at the State Department in Washington © Mena Today
Direct negotiations between Israel and Lebanon will begin next week, a senior Israeli official has confirmed, a landmark development that marks the first formal talks between the two countries in decades.
The information was first reported by Israeli journalist Barak David, who is widely regarded as well-sourced on Israeli government affairs.
According to the official, the opening meeting will take place at the State Department in Washington. The American side will be led by Michel Issa, the US Ambassador to Lebanon. Israel will be represented by its Ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter, while Lebanon will send its own Ambassador to Washington, Nada Hamadeh-Moawad.
The choice of Washington as the venue, and the State Department as the host, signals strong American involvement in shepherding what could become a historic agreement. The US is clearly not content to play a background role.
The talks come at a moment of dramatic convergence. Lebanon's government has just declared Beirut a Hezbollah weapons-free zone and tasked its army with enforcing a monopoly on arms in the capital. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu had earlier stated that Israel wanted peace talks with Lebanon to begin "as soon as possible." Both governments now appear to mean it.
If the negotiations succeed, they would produce something that has eluded the region for more than seventy years: a formal peace between Israel and Lebanon, and the removal of the Iranian proxy that made that peace impossible for so long.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that he has given an instruction for Israel to begin peace talks with Lebanon that would also include the disarming of Hezbollah.
Lebanon's cabinet took a landmark step Thursday, formally tasking the army and security forces with establishing a monopoly on weapons in Beirut, with the explicit goal of declaring the capital a "Hezbollah-free weapons zone."
Let us dispense with diplomatic courtesy. The demand by France, Spain and their European partners to include Lebanon in the US-Iran negotiations is not statesmanship.
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