Lebanon Presses Israel For Ceasefire In Washington Talks After Hezbollah Drone Injures Israelis

Lebanon said it would press Israel to cease fire at face-to-face talks that began in Washington on Thursday, with a State Department official confirming the meeting of Lebanese and Israeli envoys with US officials started at about 9 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT).

The talks are expected to continue on Friday and are the sides’ third meeting since hostilities reignited between Hezbollah and Israel on March 2, as Beirut attends despite strong objections from Hezbollah.

Al Jazeera

Lebanon’s senior official said the Lebanese delegation would seek “a ceasefire that Israel implements,” while the Israeli government spokesperson said the talks were taking place with the goal of disarming Hezbollah and reaching a peace agreement.

The Israeli military said an explosive drone launched by Hezbollah fell within Israeli territory near the border and injured several Israeli civilians, and it also carried out a new wave of attacks on Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon on Thursday.

The Lebanese health ministry reported 22 people killed in Israeli strikes on Wednesday, including eight children, and the ceasefire was due to expire on Sunday.

As the Washington meetings began, both Lebanon and Israel broadened their delegations for this round after the sides were represented by their ambassadors to Washington in the previous two meetings.

Lebanese Presidential Special Envoy Simon Karam and Israel’s Deputy National Security Adviser Yossi Draznin were set to participate, alongside senior Israeli military representatives, with a State Department official saying the talks marked the highest-level contact between Lebanon and Israel in decades.

Al-Hurra

The talks were also framed by US mediation running in parallel to diplomacy aimed at ending the US-Iran conflict, with Iran saying ending the war in Lebanon triggered by Hezbollah when it opened fire in support of Tehran on March 2 is one of its demands for a deal over the wider conflict.

In the same reporting, Hezbollah said the authorities continue to make concessions without even securing a ceasefire, and it warned that this “only worsens internal division and deepens the rift in society and state institutions.”

Israel’s delegation was headed by Israeli Ambassador to Washington Yechiel Leiter, and the Reuters account said the talks were expected to continue on Thursday and Friday at the U.S. State Department.

The reporting tied the negotiations to a broader question of who controls decision-making in Lebanon, with MTV Lebanon saying the Trump administration poses “a single question the Trump administration poses to the Lebanese state: who controls decision-making in Lebanon—the state or Hezbollah?”

MTV Lebanon also described Israeli attacks continuing in the south and in the Beqaa on May 6, and it said the Chief of Staff of the Israeli army toured the south to confirm that forces will not withdraw from Lebanon before guaranteeing the security of northern Israel.

In parallel, the same outlet said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directed the army to be prepared for all possibilities, including returning to combat if necessary, and it described U.S. President Donald Trump signaling both stick and carrot at once.

Arab News reported that Israel kept troops in a self-declared security zone in south Lebanon to shield northern Israel from attack by Hezbollah, which fired hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel during the war.

The stakes were quantified in Lebanon’s health ministry toll, which said the war has killed 2,896 people in Lebanon since March 2, including 589 women, children and medics, while some 1.2 million people had been driven from their homes in Lebanon.