US president Donald Trump announced that Israel and Lebanon have agreed to a 10-day ceasefire starting on Thursday, though there was no indication if Iran-backed Hezbollah was on board.
Trump said the truce followed ‘excellent’ conversations with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese president Joseph Aoun, taking place two days after Israel and Lebanon held peace talks in Washington.
‘These two Leaders have agreed that in order to achieve PEACE between their Countries, they will formally begin a 10 Day CEASEFIRE at 5 P.M. EST,’ Trump said on his Truth Social network.
Trump said he had directed US vice president JD Vance, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and top US military officer Dan Caine to work with the two countries ‘to achieve a Lasting PEACE.’
‘It has been my Honor to solve 9 Wars across the World, and this will be my 10th, so let’s, GET IT DONE!’ said Trump, who launched the war on Iran alongside Israel on February 28.
Hezbollah then pulled Lebanon into the Middle East war, firing rockets at Israel in support of its backer Tehran.
Since then, Israeli strikes on Lebanon have killed more than 2,000 people and displaced more than one million, and Israeli ground forces have invaded the country’s south.
The Lebanese army said that Israeli strikes that destroyed the Qasmiyeh bridge over the southern Litani River have cut off the area from the rest of the country.
‘In the context of the on-going Israeli aggression against Lebanon, the Qasmiyeh-Tyre coastal bridge was targeted and destroyed, with the aim of separating the area south of the Litani from its north and isolating it,’ the army said in a statement, adding that the strikes killed one person and wounded three others, among them ‘a soldier from the unit stationed on the bridge’.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah lawmaker Hussein Hajj Hassan said that the Lebanese government’s decision to hold direct negotiations with Israel was a ‘grave error’, urging Beirut to stop making concessions to Israel and the United States.
Israel and Lebanon agreed on Tuesday to begin direct talks following a landmark meeting between the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors to the United States, weeks after Hezbollah pulled Lebanon into the Middle East war with rocket fire at Israel in support of its backer Iran.
‘Direct negotiations with the enemy are a grave sin and a grave error,’ Hajj Hassan said from his parliamentary office.
Hajj Hassan said direct talks serve ‘no interest for the country or its citizens... so how can there be contact at the level Trump mentioned?’
He criticised the government for agreeing to negotiations before securing a ceasefire in Lebanon.
‘If they are unable to uphold a single condition called a ceasefire, how will they negotiate with the Zionist entity (Israel) under American auspices?’ he said.
The Lebanese government ‘insists on reaching a ceasefire through the Israelis and the Americans... and not through Iran,’ he said.
Israel has been carrying out huge strikes on Lebanon and a ground invasion in the country’s south, while Washington and Tehran have been at odds on whether a fragile Middle East ceasefire applies to Lebanon.
Hajj Hassan accused Lebanese officials of refusing to let the country be part of a regional ceasefire due to ‘unjustified blind hatred of Iran’.
He urged Lebanese authorities to halt ‘this series of useless concessions... to a treacherous and cunning enemy, and to a hypocritical, deceitful, evasive and lying America’.
Iran is Hezbollah’s main backer, and for decades has supplied the group with money and weapons.
On Thursday, Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf told his Lebanese counterpart and Hezbollah ally Nabih Berri that ‘for us, a ceasefire in Lebanon is just as important as a ceasefire in Iran’.
