Hezbollah has reportedly agreed to ceasefire terms proposed by the United States, according to the Lebanese government — though the terror group has “comments” that may indicate it has not fully accepted the deal.
The Times of Israel reported:
Lebanon and Hezbollah have agreed to a US proposal for a ceasefire with Israel, with some comments on the content, a top Lebanese official tells Reuters, describing the effort as the most serious yet to end to the fighting.
Ali Hassan Khalil, an aide to Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, says Lebanon had delivered its written response to the US ambassador in Lebanon on Monday and that White House envoy Amos Hochstein was traveling to Beirut to continue talks.
Asked about progress in the negotiations earlier Monday, State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller had been noncommittal:
I just don’t think it’s productive, unfortunately, to get into the details, the back-and-forth negotiations; only to say that we have been at this for some time now. We have been sharing proposals both with the Government of Lebanon and the Government of Israel. Both sides have reacted to their – to the proposals that we have put forward. There has been an exchange of different ideas for how to see what we believe is in everyone’s interest, which is the full implementation of UN Security Council 17 – Resolution 1701, and we’re going to continue to stay at that process because we believe a diplomatic resolution is key to allowing the fighting to stop, to protecting civilians, and allowing the civilians in both Israel and Lebanon to return to their homes.
Resolution 1701 requires Hezbollah to withdraw from southern Lebanon and to disarm. It has never been enforced.
A sticking point in negotiations has been Israel’s demand that it be allowed to react to attacks from Hezbollah by entering southern Lebanon. The Israeli government said Monday that it intended to continue to fight in Lebanon until the residents of northern Israel who had been evacuated because of Hezbollah’s attacks felt safe enough to return home.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
