Israeli troops are operating in a self-declared \u201csecurity zone\u201d stretching around 10 kilometers (six miles) deep inside Lebanese territory along the border<\/p>\n
JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited troops in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, vowing that his country\u2019s forces would stay in the area as long as Iran-backed Hezbollah remained a \u201cthreat.\u201d<\/p>\n
His comments came after Lebanon and Israel signed a framework agreement under US sponsorship last week to pave the way for peace between them and disarm Hezbollah.<\/p>\n
The deal makes any Israeli withdrawal from occupied Lebanese land conditional on Beirut disarming Hezbollah by creating \u201cpilot zones\u201d that the Lebanese military will take over.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur position is clear: we will not leave southern Lebanon until the threat has disappeared. And as long as Hezbollah, armed, is here and threatening us, we will stay here,\u201d Netanyahu said according to a statement from his office.<\/p>\n
He added that \u201cwe say to Iran and to Hezbollah: leave this place, you no longer belong here\u2026 There are two sovereign states that want to live in peace.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East war in March with rocket fire at Israel, triggering Israeli airstrikes and a ground invasion.<\/p>\n
Israeli troops are operating in a self-declared \u201csecurity zone\u201d stretching around 10 kilometers (six miles) deep inside Lebanese territory along the border.<\/p>\n
Lebanese authorities say Israeli attacks since the war began on March 2 have killed more than 4,200 people.<\/p>\n
In the same period, the Israeli military has reported 38 soldiers and one civilian contractor killed.<\/p>\n
AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israeli troops are operating in a self-declared \u201csecurity zone\u201d stretching around 10 kilometers (six miles) deep inside Lebanese…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-518717","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\/518717","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=518717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}