A top U.S. envoy to the Middle East on Tuesday signaled progress in negotiations between Israel and Hezbollah on a cease-fire proposal that, if agreed upon, could ease hostilities in a region already on edge over Israel’s war in Gaza.
The envoy, Amos Hochstein, said at a news conference in Beirut, Lebanon, that the gaps between the two sides had “narrowed” in discussions in recent weeks, though ultimately any results from the negotiations would be “the decision of the parties.”
“We have a real opportunity to bring this conflict to an end,” Mr. Hochstein said. That outcome is “within our grasp,” he added.
Mr. Hochstein’s visit was widely considered a sign that the United States’ efforts to broker a truce were moving forward. He met earlier on Tuesday with Nabih Berri, the Lebanese Parliament speaker who is a key interlocutor between the United States and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group and political party in Lebanon that is at war with Israel.
Last week, Iran appeared to signal support for an end to the war in Lebanon. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, dispatched a top adviser to Syria and Lebanon on Friday who called for Hezbollah to accept a cease-fire, according to two Iranians affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards Corps and who were familiar with the details of the effort.
Though both Mr. Hochstein and Lebanese officials have spoken of progress in the discussions, it is unclear whether those talks have ironed out details. Previous U.S.-led negotiations on a cease-fire stalled in September as the war escalated.
Last week, the United States presented Lebanon with the terms of a new cease-fire plan devised by Israeli and American officials, Lebanese officials said. The initial response to the plan from Lebanese officials and Hezbollah was “positive” but some points still required discussion, according to Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, who spoke with Al Araby TV, a Qatar-based broadcaster, on Monday.
The embattled Lebanese government — which is not engaged in the war on its soil, but is largely powerless to stop it — has been pushing to revive a U.N. resolution that ended the last major war between Israel and Hezbollah, in 2006. The agreement was widely considered a failure in the years after that monthlong war ended, but it is viewed today by Lebanese and U.S. officials as a potential road map to end the fighting.
The resolution calls for Hezbollah to withdraw from southern Lebanon and for only the Lebanese military and U.N. peacekeepers to operate in the region south of the Litani River in Lebanon, which runs around 20 miles north of the Israeli border.
It is not clear how Hezbollah’s withdrawal from that area would be enforced. Both the Lebanese Army and U.N. peacekeepers have largely avoided confrontations with Hezbollah fighters. The Lebanese army is also widely viewed as too weak to defend the country’s borders against any future Israeli military action.
In prior discussions on a truce this fall, Israeli officials pushed for guarantees that Israel could continue to strike Hezbollah within Lebanon if they deemed it necessary — a condition that Lebanese officials say they have rejected.
Jean-Pierre Lacroix, a United Nations under-secretary-general who oversees the contingent of U.N. peacekeeping troops in Lebanon, said at a briefing on Tuesday that his office was preparing proposals for a potentially evolving role for the U.N. troops, known as the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL.
“We are looking at the extent to which we could offer support to Lebanese armed forces, because the deployment of Lebanese armed forces to the south for the cessation of hostilities is a critical part of the settlement,” he said at United Nations headquarters in New York.
Any cease-fire must include a very serious commitment to the U.N. troops’ freedom of movement because in the past it has been severely limited, he said.
Mr. Lacroix said there were three attacks on U.N. forces on Tuesday in Lebanon. A patrol came under fire and in a separate incident four peacekeepers sustained minor injuries when an artillery shell exploded near their position in Ramyah.
A third incident occurred when rockets hit a UNIFIL base in Shama where a workshop was significantly damaged but no peacekeepers were injured. It was the second time this base had been hit in less than a week from ongoing clashes in the area, he said.
The diplomatic push by the United States comes amid intensified Israeli strikes that appear aimed at pressuring Hezbollah to accept the terms of a cease-fire, analysts say. On Monday evening, Israeli airstrikes hit a building in central Beirut — the third instance of Israeli airstrikes within the city limits in two days. The strike, which hit the Zuqaq al-Blat neighborhood, killed at least five people and injured 24 others, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
The Israeli military declined to comment on two of the three strikes, confirming only one and saying that it had targeted Mohammed Afif, the head of Hezbollah’s media office, who was killed. Over the past few days, Hezbollah has launched dozens of rocket and drone attacks at Israel.
Over the past week, Israel has also conducted intense bombardment of the Dahiya, the area just south of Beirut that is in effect governed by Hezbollah. In the country’s south, Israeli forces appear to be making incursions deeper into Lebanon, beyond villages along the border.
Despite official claims of progress in the cease-fire talks, many Lebanese remain pessimistic about the prospects of the conflict subsiding soon.
“We have no trust in negotiations, no hope of an imminent cease-fire,” Zeinab Atwi, 26, said on Tuesday as she stood across the street from the wreckage of the building struck in Zuqaq al-Blat the night before.
Her cousin, Hussein Atwi, had been killed in that strike, she said. When the war escalated, they moved from their family’s homes in the Dahiya to a rented apartment in the neighborhood, thinking it would be safer there. Mr. Atwi had gone to a nearby cafe that was struck an hour after he arrived.
“There is nowhere safe left in Beirut,” Ms. Atwi said.
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