US envoy to meet Israel’s Netanyahu in renewed push for Hizbollah ceasefire

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US envoy Amos Hochstein will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday in a renewed push by Washington to negotiate a ceasefire between Israel and Hizbollah in Lebanon.

The US blueprint for a deal involves an initial 60-day ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese militant group, and is based on a UN resolution that ended the last major round of hostilities between the two sides in 2006. Any agreement is expected to require Hizbollah to move its forces away from the contested border.

But there are disagreements over key details, including how any agreement will be implemented. Israel has demanded the ability to act militarily to enforce the deal — a position Hizbollah and the Lebanese government reject.

Hochstein, who has spent the past year trying to broker a deal, arrived in Israel on Wednesday night after two days of talks with Lebanese officials, saying in Beirut that there had been “additional progress” and that he would “try and bring this to a close if we can”.

He met Netanyahu’s closest aide, strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer, on Wednesday night, according to Israeli media. Hochstein was due to meet the prime minister on Thursday afternoon, Netanyahu’s Likud party said.

Israeli forces and Hizbollah have been trading fire since the Lebanese militant group began launching rockets at Israel in solidarity with Hamas following the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 2023 attack on Israel.

The fighting has escalated in recent months, with Israel carrying out a devastating bombing campaign and launching a ground invasion of Lebanon in October.

The fighting has killed more than 3,500 people in Lebanon and more than 120 Israelis, according to officials in both countries.

Ahead of Hochstein’s arrival, Israeli officials had insisted that Israel would demand the freedom to strike Hizbollah in Lebanon if it violated any deal.

“The condition for any political arrangement in Lebanon is the preservation of intelligence capabilities and the preservation of the Israel Defense Forces’ right to act and protect Israeli citizens from Hizbollah,” the country’s new defence minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday.

However, Hizbollah and the Lebanese government have made clear they would reject any agreement that gives the Israeli military freedom of movement in Lebanon.

Hizbollah’s new secretary-general Naim Qassem said in a televised speech on Wednesday that Hizbollah had received the latest US proposal and made comments on it, adding that they had been “discussed in detail” with Hochstein, through Lebanon’s Speaker of parliament Nabih Berri.

But he insisted that negotiations must “preserve Lebanon’s sovereignty, meaning that the Israeli enemy has no right to violate, or to kill, or to enter whenever it pleases”.

Lebanese officials have said the ceasefire negotiations are based on UN Security Council resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between the two sides and required Israeli troops to leave Lebanon and Hizbollah to withdraw to the north of the Litani river, about 30km from the border.

The resolution was never implemented, with Hizbollah retaining a military presence in south Lebanon. Both sides accuse each other of violating the resolution.

There is also deep distrust in Beirut over whether Israel will go through with the ceasefire. “We are facing decisive days,” Berri told Lebanese daily Al Liwaa on Wednesday. “Either Netanyahu accepts and the war ends, or he refuses as usual and we move to worse scenarios.”

Diplomats hope a deal between Israel and Hizbollah could make it easier to secure a separate deal to end the fighting with Hamas in Gaza. Those talks remain deadlocked. On Wednesday, the US vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for an “immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza.