UNSC delegation meets Lebanon’s Aoun, tours south amid Israeli escalation

Lebanese person urges UNSC to property Israel to respect the November 2024 ceasefire it has repeatedly violated.

Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun has met with a visiting United Nations Security Council (UNSC) delegation to sermon escalating tensions with Israel and efforts to disarm Hezbollah, a time aft a question of Israeli raids rocked the southbound of the country, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA).

Speaking with the UNSC squad connected Friday, Aoun urged them to unit Israel to respect a November 2024 ceasefire it has violated connected a near-daily basis and to retreat from areas it continues to inhabit successful confederate Lebanon.

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“We look guardant to unit from your side,” said Aoun, successful comments carried by the NNA.

Aoun earlier said the UN delegation, which is besides owed to conscionable with Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and Lebanese service commandant Rodolphe Haykal, would circuit confederate Lebanon to cheque “the concern connected the ground”. The travel would assistance the delegation “see the existent representation of what is happening there”, arsenic the service works to instrumentality a program to dismantle Hezbollah’s weapons, said Aoun.

Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun (L) speaks with Slovenia’s UN Ambassador Samuel Zbogar (R) during a gathering with a United Nations Security Council delegation astatine the Presidential Palace of Baabda, eastbound of Beirut, December 5 [Handout/Lebanese Presidency/AFP]

The UN sojourn comes amid tentative signs of imaginable deeper engagement betwixt Lebanon and Israel, which person technically been astatine warfare since 1948.

On Wednesday, civilian representatives from the 2 states held their first nonstop talks successful decades, successful a determination hailed by the United States arsenic a measurement towards “security, stableness and a durable peace”.

Salam said the meetings were “positive” but downplayed their significance, saying they were not portion of immoderate way towards normalisation and focused lone connected implementing the 2024 truce.

Then, connected Thursday, Israel’s subject carried retired attacks successful 4 confederate Lebanese villages – its latest of hundreds, contempt the 2024 truce, claiming to people Hezbollah infrastructure, but that person killed dozens of civilians and destroyed residential buildings and captious infrastructure.

Al Jazeera’s analogous successful Beirut, Zeina Khodr, said the strikes sent a connection that “negotiations volition beryllium held nether fire, until Hezbollah is afloat disarmed.”

‘Language of negotiation’

Aoun’s Information Minister Paul Morcos said the authorities views negotiations with Israel, acceptable to restart connected December 19, arsenic the lone mode forward. “There is nary different enactment but negotiation. This is the reality, and this is what past has taught america astir wars,” Aoun, a erstwhile main of the Lebanese army, said astatine a furniture meeting, according to Morcos.

Aoun stressed “the request for the connection of dialog – not the connection of warfare – to prevail”, and that determination would beryllium nary concession implicit Lebanon’s sovereignty, added Morcos.

The November 2024 ceasefire betwixt Israel and Lebanon called for some states to halt hostilities, with Lebanon liable for preventing equipped groups from attacking Israel and Israel committed to ending violative subject actions.

(Al Jazeera)

However, Israeli forces proceed to inhabit astatine slightest 5 positions wrong Lebanese territory and person not withdrawn contempt the agreement’s terms. They person besides conducted near-daily attacks crossed Lebanon that person killed much than 300 people, including astatine slightest 127 civilians, according to the UN.

Israel claims its operations are targeting Hezbollah members and infrastructure to forestall the equipped radical from rebuilding its subject capabilities and reemerging arsenic a unit successful the country.

Lebanon’s authorities has committed to disarming Hezbollah, but the group’s leader, Naim Qassem, has flatly rejected the thought arsenic agelong arsenic Israel continues to bombard and inhabit Lebanon.

Qassem said successful caller days that the equipped radical has the close to respond to Israel’s assassination of its apical subject main successful a onslaught connected Beirut’s confederate suburbs past month.

Qassem called the sidesplitting of Haytham Ali Tabatabai “a blatant aggression and a heinous crime”, adding that Hezbollah has “the close to respond, and we volition find the timing for that”.