US hands ceasefire proposal to Beirut as IDF officer killed in southern Lebanon

An IDF officer was killed and another officer was seriously wounded during fighting in southern Lebanon on Thursday, the military announced, as a Hezbollah drone wounded two soldiers in northern Israel.

The casualties came as Israel continued to pound Hezbollah targets in Lebanon — as well as in Syria — while the sides continued to look toward a possible ceasefire.

Lt. Ivri Dickshtein, 21, from Eli, was killed during an exchange of fire with Hezbollah operatives on Thursday, the army said.

Dickshtein, a platoon commander in the Golani Brigade’s 51st Battalion, had led his platoon in an offensive in a village in southern Lebanon. Amid the operation, the troops entered a building where they encountered at least five Hezbollah gunmen. The platoon commander was killed and another officer was seriously wounded during the gun battle. Another soldier was also moderately hurt in the incident. According to the probe, all five Hezbollah operatives were killed in the exchange.

In Israel, a drone launched from Lebanon impacted near the northern town of Eliakim, some 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the northern border, wounding two soldiers.

The drone had set off sirens for more than half an hour along Israel’s northern coast, including in Haifa.

The two soldiers were admitted to Rambam Hospital in Haifa with shrapnel wounds. They were in moderate condition, the medical center said.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported that the US ambassador to Lebanon had submitted a draft for a proposed truce in Lebanon to the country’s speaker of parliament, Nabih Berri.

US ambassador Lisa Johnson met with Berri, a Hezbollah ally and the typical conduit for diplomacy with the group, on Thursday to submit Washington’s first written proposal in at least several weeks, two senior Lebanese political sources said.

“It is a draft to get observations from the Lebanese side,” one of the sources told Reuters. Neither source could provide details on the contents of the proposal.

According to The Wall Street Journal, US President-elect Donald Trump signed off on the proposal on Sunday during a meeting with Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer at Mar-a-Lago. The report said Trump green-lit the proposal following a briefing from Dermer, and expressed hope that it would be implemented before he takes office on January 20, 2025.

On Thursday, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar spoke with his French counterpart Jean-Noel Barrot, and told him that there was “progress” in attempts to reach a ceasefire in Lebanon that would allow Israelis to return to their homes safely.

According to the Foreign Ministry, Sa’ar stressed that implementation of any agreement must be ensured, including keeping Hezbollah away from the border and preventing it from rearming through Syria.

Sa’ar stressed that “the international community has a role to act so that Lebanon will once again belong to the Lebanese people and not to the Iranian regime.”

Also Thursday, Energy Minister Eli Cohen said Israel was closer to reaching a ceasefire agreement than it had been since the start of the war, but that it must retain freedom to act inside Lebanon should any deal be violated.

Lebanese officials told Reuters that “direct enforcement” by Israel had not been formally floated to Lebanon, but that it would be rejected by Beirut.

“The idea that Israel can enforce at any time — that is unthinkable,” one of the political sources said.

UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix said that “redeployment of the Lebanese armed forces is an absolutely central element to any durable settlement” in southern Lebanon.

Lacroix, who oversees the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, said the UN intends to bolster its peacekeeping mission there to better support the Lebanese army once a truce is agreed to, but will not directly enforce a ceasefire.

“I think that has to be very clear. Implementing the [2006 UN Resolution] 1701 is the responsibility of the parties,” says Lacroix. “UNIFIL has a supportive role, and there is a lot of substance in that supporting role.”

The IDF said Thursday it had seen a decrease in the number of rockets fired by Hezbollah at Israel in the past week, down to under 100 a day on average, compared with 150-200 a day last month and in the months before that.

The military believes Hezbollah is struggling to carry out major barrages, as most of its rocket stockpiles have been targeted and dozens of its commanders have been killed. Before the war, the IDF had assessed that Hezbollah would fire thousands of rockets per day in an escalation.

Lebanon’s state media reported Thursday that an Israeli airstrike killed at least nine people and wounded five others in Baalbek city in northeastern Lebanon.

Throughout the day, sporadic airstrikes targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs in a clear uptick in attacks on the area over the past two days, with the IDF issuing evacuation warnings for several locations and buildings in the suburbs.

Israeli fighter jets struck several Hezbollah weapons depots in the Hezbollah stronghold, following evacuation warnings, the IDF said.

The sites were located “in the heart of a civilian population,” the military noted, accusing the terror group of using innocents as human shields.

The United States voiced concern on Thursday over Beirut-area fighting.

“You’ve heard us say time and time again that we do not want to see these kinds of [military] operations in Beirut, especially as it relates to densely populated areas,” said US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel when asked about the strikes.

Israel has struck more than 300 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in the past week, including 40 in Beirut, IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Thursday evening.

“We are striking… from Dahiyeh to Damascus,” he said in a press conference, referring to the southern suburbs of Beirut as well as the Syrian capital.

The targets in Lebanon included weapons depots, commander centers and rocket launchers, according to Hagari.

The IDF spokesman noted: “We have identified that there are rockets and other weapons Hezbollah is launching at Israel that were manufactured in Syria, and were transferred to Hezbollah from Syria.”

Hagari vowed that the IDF will target “all attempts to transfer weapons from Syria to Hezbollah and strike any infrastructure we identify in Syria that is being used to manufacture weapons for Hezbollah.”

On Thursday, Syria’s state-run SANA news agency reported fresh Israeli airstrikes in the al-Qusayr area, near the border with Lebanon.

Also Thursday, UNIFIL said two or three unknown people fired approximately 30 shots in the direction of its peacekeepers on Thursday.

The UNIFIL soldiers fired back and moved to safety. No one was hurt in the incident and an investigation was launched, UNIFIL said in a statement. It implied the shooters were Lebanese.

“We remind the Lebanese authorities of their responsibility to ensure the safety and security of peacekeepers who are carrying out sensitive and important work on Lebanese territory,” the UN force added. “We have requested the Lebanese authorities undertake a full and complete investigation of this incident and bring the perpetrators to justice.”

Since October 8, 2023, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis, with the group saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there.

Some 60,000 residents were evacuated from northern towns on the Lebanon border shortly after Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, amid fears Hezbollah would carry out a similar attack, and increasing rocket fire by the terror group.

The attacks on northern Israel since October 2023 have resulted in the deaths of 43 civilians. In addition, 69 IDF soldiers and reservists have died in cross-border skirmishes and in the ensuing ground operation launched in southern Lebanon in late September. Two soldiers have been killed in a drone attack from Iraq, and there have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.

The IDF estimates that some 3,000 Hezbollah operatives have been killed in the conflict. Around 100 members of other terror groups, along with hundreds of civilians, have also been reported killed in Lebanon.