Lebanon, Israel and the United States on Friday signed a trilateral framework agreement aimed at paving the way for a peace deal between the two long-time Middle East adversaries.
The agreement — which includes a pilot effort in which Lebanese soldiers take control of two areas occupied by Israel, as well as a process aimed at disarming Hezbollah — is the result of five rounds of talks in the US capital.
The deal “begins to put in place a framework for lasting peace and security,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the signing ceremony, noting: “It’s the beginning of the beginning. There’s a lot of work ahead.”
Lebanon’s ambassador to Washington, Nada Hamadeh Moawad, said the accord “is a first step on the road to restoring Lebanese sovereignty and territorial integrity, securing a permanent and final cessation of hostilities (and) enabling our people to go back to their land.”
And Israel’s US envoy, Yechiel Leiter, said that under the deal, “Iran is out, Hezbollah is out, and the road to peace between Israel and Lebanon is in.”
Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the broader Middle East war on March 2 with rocket fire aimed at Israel to avenge the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli strikes.
Israel responded with heavy airstrikes and a ground invasion, and its troops continue to occupy swaths of southern Lebanon, where they have been carrying out extensive demolition of homes and other buildings.
According to the agreement, whose text was released late Friday by the State Department, Israel and Lebanon “declare their intent to conclusively end the conflict, address its underlying causes, and to therewith formally conclude any state of war between them.”
It also establishes a process by which the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) would restore “sovereign authority over all Lebanese territory,” pending the “verified disarmament of non-state armed groups,” particularly Hezbollah.
That in turn would allow the Israeli Defense Forces to “progressively redeploy out of the Lebanese territory,” the agreement states.
Despite the deal, Israel and its bitter enemy Hezbollah — which is part of the Lebanese government but also maintains a powerful armed wing outside state control — made clear that major differences remain.
