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Israel and Lebanon agree to implement ceasefire if Hezbollah stops attacks
Israel and Lebanon have agreed to the implementation of a ceasefire, the US State Department has announced in a statement.
The agreement is "contingent on a complete cessation" of attacks from the Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah, among other conditions.
It comes after Israeli strikes killed at least nine people in southern Lebanon on Wednesday and Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel, testing a shaky truce initially agreed in April.
"All countries reaffirmed that the future of the relationship between Israel and Lebanon must be decided by the two sovereign governments. They rejected any attempt, by any state or non-state actor, to hold Lebanon's future hostage," the statement said.
The agreement, reached after the fourth round of US-brokered talks in Washington, is contingent on the "evacuation of all [Hezbollah] operatives" from an area Israel controls in southern Lebanon from the Litani river to the border.
The statement said the US would help guide the creation of "pilot zones in which the Lebanese Armed Forces will take exclusive control of the territory to the exclusion of all non-state actors". No further detail was given on how the zones would work.
The announcement follows a partial ceasefire agreed on Monday, which Lebanon said would see Israel refrain from bombing Beirut, in exchange for Hezbollah not attacking Israel.
The two countries will meet again on 22 June to hold further talks "with a view toward reaching a comprehensive agreement". Hezbollah has not yet commented publicly on the announcement.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters before the announcement that he hoped they would produce "an action plan on a track for security in [Lebanon], independent from Hezbollah".
The partial ceasefire was tested by both Israeli and Hezbollah fire this week.
Lebanon's health ministry said those killed by Israel on Wednesday included two paramedics whose ambulance was hit in a strike in the southern Chehour area. A car was also struck just south of the capital Beirut.
Meanwhile, Israel's military said it had intercepted a drone and two projectiles that crossed the border. Hezbollah said it targeted a gathering of Israeli troops.
Before the announcement on Wednesday evening, Israel's leaders had warned that the country's military would resume strikes on the Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut's southern suburbs, known as Dahieh, if the group launched cross-border attacks on northern Israeli communities.
According to the Lebanese government, the partial ceasefire agreed on Monday stated that "Israel will not launch a broad offensive on Beirut in exchange for Hezbollah refraining from launching attacks against Israel".
The government said Hezbollah had confirmed its acceptance, but a member of the group's political council, Mahmoud Qamati, told the BBC on Tuesday: "There was no ceasefire agreement, just the protection of Dahieh."
Qamati also insisted that Hezbollah would not abide by any commitments made at the Lebanese-Israeli talks in Washington.
"We think these negotiations do not concern us, nor do we recognise their findings or decisions, because we have rejected them on principle," he said.
Lebanon was drawn into the war between the US, Israel and Iran on 2 March, when Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel in retaliation for an Israeli strike that killed Iran's supreme leader. Israel responded with an air campaign across Lebanon and a ground invasion in the south.
Hezbollah is a Shia Muslim political and military group that operates in Lebanon and which has been involved in a series of violent conflicts with Israel. The group is considered a terrorist organisation by Israel and many other nations, including the UK and US.
A US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon on 16 April failed to stop the fighting, and last week Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to intensify its strikes on Hezbollah and advance deeper into Lebanon in response to drone and rocket attacks on communities in northern Israel.
At least 3,516 people have been killed in Lebanon since the start of the war, according to the country's health ministry. Its figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
The UN says more than one million people have also registered themselves as displaced in Lebanon, where Israeli evacuation orders cover more than an eighth of the country.
Israel says 26 of its soldiers and four Israeli civilians have been killed on both sides of the border during the war.
Lebanese media reported Israeli strikes across the south of the country on Wednesday.
The health ministry said four Syrians and two Palestinians were killed in a strike in the al-Housh area, which is just south of the coastal city of Tyre.
The ministry also said that two paramedics were killed and a third was seriously wounded when Israeli forces "directly targeted an ambulance" in the Chehour area, which is about 14km (9 miles) to the east. The ambulance belonged to the Risala Scouts Association, which is affiliated with the Amal movement, an ally of Hezbollah.
The ministry accused the Israeli military of "demonstrating contempt for international humanitarian law", which specifically protects medical personnel.
At least 128 paramedics and healthcare workers have been killed in Israeli attacks on ambulances and medical facilities over the past three months, according to the ministry.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. In the past, it has claimed that ambulances are being used for military purposes, without providing any evidence.
The Lebanese army, meanwhile, said that one of its soldiers was killed in an Israeli air strike on the road between Nabatieh and Kfar Tebnit, about 27km north-east of Tyre. Lebanon's state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported that his motorbike was targeted by a drone.
The army said another two Lebanese soldiers were injured in a separate Israeli strike on their vehicle on the road between Deir Zahrani and Nabatieh.
It denounced what it called "a pattern of deliberate strikes targeting army personnel, vehicles and positions" by Israeli forces.
This week at Beirut's waterfront, where thousands of displaced people are living in tents with limited access to food, clean water and bathrooms, Mariam Hessa said she wanted a ceasefire that covered the whole country.
"I don't think it's fair, because always the south is being bombed, and the houses [are] being damaged, destroyed, people are dying," the 23-year-old student told the BBC.
I want the ceasefire to be for all Lebanon, not just for an area like Dahieh or even the south. No, it's for all Lebanon. We need this.
The partial ceasefire was announced by US President Donald Trump, who on Wednesday appeared to confirm a report that it was brokered after he had called Netanyahu "crazy" in an expletive-laden call prompted by the prime minister's order to bomb the Lebanese capital.
I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon," Trump told the New York Post's Pod Force One podcast. "At some point, I said: 'Bibi [Netanyahu], we've got to stop this.'
Netanyahu subsequently agreed to hold off from striking Beirut, but he stressed that the Israeli military would continue operating in southern Lebanon.
When asked about the call in an interview with CNBC, Netanyahu said: "Sometimes, like the best families, we have these tactical disagreements. We always find a way to resolve them."
Trump is said to be concerned that further escalation in Lebanon could jeopardise a wider deal to end the war between the US, Israel and Iran.
Iran has warned the US that any regional ceasefire must include Lebanon.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned on Wednesday that if Israeli aggression against Beirut continued, its armed forces were "fully prepared" to resume the war, Iran's Tasnim news agency reported.
But later on Wednesday Trump said that he wanted to separate the US-Iran talks from those on the war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
"I'd like to separate it, I'd like to have a separate thing, because it is... separate," the US president told reporters.
Source: BBC
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