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.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday negotiating a deal with Iran could "take a few days," quashing hopes for an imminent end to the conflict a day after U.S. forces conducted what Washington called defensive strikes in southern Iran.
Israel will escalate strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday, as a U.S. official said the militia had ignored warnings to halt firing at Israel in a conflict that could threaten U.S.-Iran negotiations.
Iran's top negotiator and its foreign minister were in Doha for talks with Qatar's prime minister on a potential deal with the U.S. to end the three-month-old war, an official briefed on the visit said on Monday, after Washington and Tehran played down hopes for an imminent breakthrough.
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