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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday he had ordered his cabinet to open direct talks with Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah and establish “peace relations” between the two countries.
“In light of Lebanon’s repeated requests to open direct negotiations with Israel, I instructed the cabinet yesterday to begin direct negotiations with Lebanon as soon as possible,” his office wrote in a statement.
“Negotiations will focus on disarming Hezbollah and establishing peace relations between Israel and Lebanon. Israel appreciates today’s call by the Prime Minister of Lebanon to demilitarize Beirut,” the statement added.
The statement from Netanyahu’s office comes on the same day that the Israeli military warned residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs, long a stronghold of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, of imminent strikes and called for them to evacuate.
“The Israel Defence Forces continue to operate and strike the military infrastructure belonging to the terrorist organisation Hezbollah across various areas of the southern suburbs,” the military’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a post on X.
“The IDF does not intend to harm you and is acting only against Hezbollah operatives and military targets. Therefore, for your safety, you must evacuate immediately.”
That warning came a day after Israel carried out its largest wave of strikes since the start of its war with Hezbollah on 2 March, killing more than 200 people.
Hezbollah said it was engaged in close quarters combat against Israeli forces on the ground on Thursday in the southern town of Bint Jbeil.
While Israel regularly issues evacuation warnings before bombing Beirut’s southern suburbs, Thursday’s announcement also included the outskirts of Lebanon’s only international airport.
There has been confusion about whether the ceasefire deal with Iran, which came into force in the early hours of Wednesday, includes Lebanon.
Both Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump say it doesn’t, a claim disputed by mediators in Pakistan.
“They were not included in the deal,” Trump said, according to a social media post by PBS News Hour correspondent Liz Landers.
Brussels, Moscow and Ankara have all demanded that the two-day-old ceasefire be extended to Lebanon.
“We view the situation in southern Lebanon with particular concern,” Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz said, echoing statements from Paris and London.
“The severity with which Israel is waging war there could cause the peace process as a whole to fail and that must not be allowed to happen,” he warned.
For their part, Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf warned Tehran sees Lebanon as an “inseparable part of the ceasefire” and President Masoud Pezeshkian said Israel’s strikes rendered “meaningless” talks with US envoys planned for the end of the week in Pakistan.
High-stakes talks
If the Pakistan talks go ahead, a key point of contention remains the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil as well as vast quantities of natural gas and fertiliser pass in peacetime.
Iran announced alternative routes on Thursday for ships travelling through the strait, citing the risk of sea mines.
But it was unclear if Tehran was in practice allowing vessels to pass through the strait, following reports on Wednesday suggesting it was shut, something the White House called “completely unacceptable.”
Additional sources • AFP