The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, made the comments a day after the U.S. and Iran signed an interim pact that calls for parties to ensure \u201cthe territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Israel expanded its invasion of southern Lebanon after the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah opened fire at Israel on March 2 in support of its ally Iran. It has since staged a devastating air and ground campaign that it says aims to root out Hezbollah.<\/p>\n
Israel describes the territory it has seized in Lebanon, Gaza and Syria as \u201cbuffer zones\u201d between it and its enemies, a core facet of Israel\u2019s recent security policy. Netanyahu has rejected calls for Israel to withdraw from those territories.<\/p>\n
The senior Israeli official told Reuters that Israel was \u201cconducting stubborn negotiations\u201d with Washington over continuing its deployment of troops in southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n
The official said Israel would not back down on its positions, including keeping troops deployed in the area south of Lebanon\u2019s Litani River.<\/p>\n
A second Israeli official told Reuters that the outcome of the talks would ultimately depend on whether U.S. President Donald Trump \u201cdecides to force the issue\u201d by threatening repercussions if Israel does not abide by the interim Iran pact\u2019s terms.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu\u2019s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, made the comments a day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-498789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498789","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=498789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}