Israel and Lebanon have agreed to launch direct negotiations at a mutually agreed-upon time and place following a trilateral meeting hosted by the United States in Washington on Tuesday, the US State Department said in a statement.
The US described the first direct talks between Israel and Lebanon in more than 30 years as a “huge accomplishment”.
“What I’ve learned as a diplomat, sometimes just having the meeting, getting all sides in the room, is a huge first accomplishment,” US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz said.
The meeting on Tuesday at the State Department brought together Lebanese Ambassador Nada Hamadeh Moawad and Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter, alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa, State Department Counsellor Michael Needham and Waltz.
Why did the two sides meet?
Israeli strikes on Lebanon have killed more than 2,100 people and displaced more than one million since March 2, despite international calls for a ceasefire.
Israel has also carried out a ground invasion in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah and Israel resumed fighting following the killing of Iran’s then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in an Israel-US attack on February 28.
In 2024, Israel targeted Hezbollah leadership and killed its members by exploding rigged pagers and walkie-talkies.
Israel also killed Hezbollah’s long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah on September 27 of the same year.
The two sides had maintained an uneasy truce since November 2024.
Lebanon proposed direct talks in a bid to stop the escalation.
Israel did not respond positively until last week, after its deadly bombardment hit several crowded commercial and residential areas in Beirut, sparking an international outcry and triggering threats by Iran that it would end a ceasefire with the United States, announced last week.
Since the US President Donald Trump announced the truce with Iran, mediator Pakistan and Tehran have said Israel’s war in Lebanon falls within the ambit of the deal, while Israel rejects this and maintains that it is not bound by the US-Iran ceasefire framework in Lebanon.
The talks marked a rare direct engagement between the two sides, though Hezbollah was not represented.
Naim Qassem, the leader of Hezbollah, called for the latest talks to be scrapped before they even began, describing them as “futile” and urging the Lebanese government to focus on confronting Israeli aggression.
What was said after the meeting?
Lebanese Ambassador Moawad called the meeting “constructive” but said she had also called for a ceasefire and insisted on “the full sovereignty of the state over all Lebanese land”, among other issues.
Lebanon has characterised the Washington talks as an initial, exploratory step focused on securing a halt in Israeli attacks, Al Jazeera reported, quoting Lebanese culture minister Ghassan Salame.