{"id":193610,"date":"2025-12-19T19:53:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T19:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/193610\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T19:53:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T19:53:12","slug":"israel-lebanon-officials-meet-as-pressure-mounts-to-disarm-hezbollah-israel-attacks-lebanon-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/193610\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel, Lebanon officials meet as pressure mounts to disarm Hezbollah | Israel attacks Lebanon News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The committee tasked with overseeing a ceasefire agreement<\/a> between Israel and Hezbollah has held talks in southern Lebanon, as Israel and the United States ramp up pressure to disarm the Lebanese group.<\/p>\n

Civilian and military delegations from Israel and Lebanon met in the southern Lebanese town of Naqoura on Friday for closed-door discussions, the 15th such gathering since the truce was signed in November 2024.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

The US embassy in Beirut said military participants offered \u201coperational updates\u201d and agreed on the need to strengthen the Lebanese army as a guarantor of security south of the Litani River.<\/p>\n

\u201cCivilian participants, in parallel, focused on setting conditions for residents to return safely to their homes, advancing reconstruction, and addressing economic priorities,\u201d the embassy said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey underscored that durable political and economic progress is essential to reinforcing security gains and sustaining lasting peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

The talks come as Israel has repeatedly violated the ceasefire with Hezbollah, carrying out near-daily attacks<\/a> across Lebanon, most notably in the south.<\/p>\n

The Israeli military launched a series of air strikes across the country a day before the Friday meetings, claiming in a statement that it was targeting the Lebanese group\u2019s military operatives and infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Reporting from Naqoura, Al Jazeera\u2019s Zeina Khodr said the talks were expected to focus on solidifying what has largely been a one-sided truce.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt least that is what Lebanon wants,\u201d she said. \u201cThe Israeli army still occupies more than 10 square kilometres [about 4sq miles] of Lebanese territory along the border.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next meeting in January<\/p>\n

After the meetings, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun met Lebanese diplomat Simon Karam, who has been appointed as the country\u2019s top civilian negotiator.<\/p>\n

A statement by the Lebanese presidency said Aoun stressed that allowing tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians who have been displaced as a result of Israel\u2019s attacks to return to their villages and homes was \u201can entry point for addressing all other details\u201d.<\/p>\n

Aoun said the committee\u2019s next meeting is scheduled for January 7.<\/p>\n

He also welcomed a separate diplomatic agreement reached in Paris between the US, France and Saudi Arabia to organise an international conference in early 2026 to support the Lebanese army and the country\u2019s internal security forces.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s National Security Council Deputy Director for Foreign Policy Yosef Dreznin represented the country in the civilian talks.<\/p>\n

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the meeting as a \u201ccontinuation of the security dialogue aimed at ensuring the disarmament of Hezbollah by the Lebanese army\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the meeting, ways to promote economic projects were discussed in order to underscore the mutual interest in removing the Hezbollah threat and ensuring sustainable security for residents on both sides of the border,\u201d it said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters in Washington, DC, on Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US wants to \u201cempower\u201d the Lebanese government to remove Hezbollah\u2019s weapons, underscoring Israeli threats to take action against the Lebanese group.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all would hope that we could avoid that,\u201d Rubio said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn order to have peace, you have to avoid that, and the best way to avoid it is to have a strong Lebanese government that can actually control the country, that Hezbollah is no longer an armed threat to Israel or to the Lebanese state.\u201d<\/p>\n

For its part, Hezbollah has rejected the prospect<\/a>\u00a0of laying down its weapons while Israel continues to regularly launch attacks on Lebanon and occupy parts of its territory.<\/p>\n

Naim Qassem<\/a>, who became Hezbollah\u2019s secretary-general after his predecessor Hassan Nasrallah and most of the group\u2019s military and political leadership were assassinated by Israel, has accused the Lebanese government of giving concessions without receiving anything in return.<\/p>\n

Paul Salem, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, told Al Jazeera that the talks remain limited at the moment but may, in the future, evolve into broader topics, including a full cessation of hostilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cI doubt it will get into anything related to peace, certainly not now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The committee tasked with overseeing a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah has held talks in southern Lebanon,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[86,85,46,48084,88,47,43,1032,1156],"class_list":["post-193610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-hezbollah","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israel-attacks-lebanon","tag-lebanon","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}