Lebanon PM says truce monitor negotiations with Israel are not peace talks

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam says new negotiations with Israel taking place under the auspices of a ceasefire monitoring mechanism were not broader peace talks, while adding his country is open to the mechanism verifying efforts to disarm Hezbollah.

Israel and Lebanon have technically been in a state of war since 1948, and despite the new diplomatic contact, Salam says in an interview that “we are not yet at peace talks.”

He also says that economic talks would be part of any normalization process with Israel, which would have to follow a peace agreement.

If both countries adhere to a 2002 Arab peace plan, which calls for a Palestinian state and which Israel has not accepted, “normalization will follow, but we are not there at all”, he tells journalists.

He also says Lebanon is “open to verification by the mechanism” when it came to its efforts to disarm Hezbollah. Israel and the terror group fought a war that ended in a ceasefire a year ago.

The ceasefire required both Israel and Hezbollah to vacate southern Lebanon, to be replaced by the Lebanese armed forces. Israel has withdrawn from all but five strategic posts along the border.

Since the ceasefire, the IDF said it has killed over 370 Hezbollah operatives and members of allied terror groups in strikes, hit hundreds of Hezbollah sites, and conducted over 1,200 raids and other small operations in southern Lebanon.

Weakened by the war and still facing regular Israeli strikes, Hezbollah is under internal and international pressure to hand over its weapons, with the Lebanese army having drawn up a plan to disarm it.