Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday that the United States has not demanded that Israel withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon, a condition set by Lebanon in ongoing ceasefire negotiations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have announced that in any case we are not withdrawing and, as of this moment \u2014 and this is a diplomatic achievement \u2014 there is no American demand for Israel to withdraw from Lebanon,\u201d Katz said in an interview at a convention of local leaders in Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n
When asked if the army would adhere to such a US request if it was made, Katz said he told US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US President Donald Trump that \u201cwe are there to protect the residents of the north\u201d of Israel.<\/p>\n
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun rejected Israel\u2019s occupation of the south and foreign interference in his country\u2019s affairs \u2014 an allusion to Hezbollah\u2019s backer Iran \u2014 as\u00a0a fifth round of Israel-Lebanon talks began in Washington on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Tehran has also reiterated that peace in Lebanon was a fundamental pillar of reaching a definitive agreement with Washington for an overall end to the Middle East war.<\/p>\n
Washington and Tehran signed a memorandum of understanding last week aimed at reaching a permanent settlement between the two countries, following the war launched by the US and Israel on Iran on February 28.<\/p>\n
Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East war on March 2 with rocket fire at Israel to avenge the killing of Iran\u2019s supreme leader in US-Israeli strikes.<\/p>\n
Israel responded with airstrikes and a ground offensive that Lebanon says have killed more than 4,100 people, which led to the occupation of a 10-kilometre (six-mile) security zone in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel.<\/p>\n
Israeli officials have insisted that the country will retain control of that zone.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Netanyahu said Israeli forces in Lebanon retained \u201cfull freedom of action to thwart any direct or developing threat\u201d.<\/p>\n
Israel and Lebanon are currently involved in a US-mediated round of talks in Washington to seek a diplomatic solution to the conflict and the disarmament of Hezbollah and the withdrawal of Israeli troops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday that the United States has not demanded that Israel withdraw its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,399,46,100524,43],"class_list":["post-509769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-international","tag-israel","tag-mna","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509769","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=509769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}