Israel and Lebanon are set to hold talks in Washington next week, Lebanese broadcaster LBCI reported Wednesday. The meetings come as the ceasefire continues to unravel, with Hezbollah maintaining steady rocket fire at communities in northern Israel.
According to the report, Lebanon’s ambassador to Washington has been in constant coordination with the U.S. Secretary of State’s team. Two preparatory meetings already took place earlier this week, on Monday and Tuesday, ahead of the main round of talks. During those sessions, the Lebanese ambassador submitted a document detailing what Lebanon calls “Israeli violations” and emphasized Lebanon’s demand for a ceasefire.
Meanwhile, IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir visited southern Lebanon and told the fighters, “Your mission is to remove any threat from our communities and our forces. All IDF capabilities are at your disposal; you have no limit to the use of force for this purpose, and you will continue the mission to locate the enemy in the area and destroy it. Since the beginning of Operation Roaring Lion, more than 2,000 Hezbollah terrorists have been eliminated. We will seize every opportunity to deepen the damage to Hezbollah and its continued weakening.”
In parallel with calls for Israel to intensify the fighting in Lebanon, our correspondent Hillel Biton Rosen published this week on Channel 14 that the defense establishment estimates that the prolonged fighting has led to a significant shortage of weapons in Hezbollah’s ranks, a predicament that is expected to limit the organization’s capabilities in the continuation of the campaign in the coming months. These estimates are in addition to the data on manpower attrition: According to the report, only about 600 Radwan terrorists remain in southern Lebanon, out of about 1,000 who were in the area at the beginning of the campaign.