Israel now believes Lebanon’s army is not fulfilling its role in a pilot program to disarm Hezbollah, and is actually coordinating its activities with the terror group. The assessment comes as negotiations with Israel have been postponed until October at Lebanon’s request.
We reported tonight on Channel 14’s main newscast: For the first time, Israel is speaking in clear terms about the failure of the pilot program for Lebanon’s army to disarm Hezbollah.
A political source told us tonight: “Not only is the Lebanese army not carrying out what’s required of it under the pilot program—we assess with fairly high probability that it is coordinating its activity with Hezbollah. This coordination starts at the level of the Lebanese chief of staff, Rodolphe Haikal, and reaches down to soldiers in the field. The pilot has failed—there’s no other way to define it.”
Against this grim backdrop, negotiations with Lebanon that were supposed to resume this month have been postponed for now until October, according to Israel as a result of a Lebanese request.
Either way, the current understanding in Jerusalem is that the state of Lebanon is incapable of healing on its own the Hezbollah cancer festering within it—that job, it seems, only the IDF will be able to carry out.