Visiting US envoy Amos Hochstein yesterday said that the basis of a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah was a 2006 UN resolution, but it would require full implementation.
UN Security Council Resolution 1701 states that only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers should be deployed in southern Lebanon, while demanding the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanese territory.
Attention has focused on the resolution during the latest Israel-Hezbollah war that erupted last month after nearly a year of cross-border fire.
Photo: AFP
“The commitment that we have is to resolve this conflict based on [UN Resolution] 1701 — that is what the solution is going to have to look like,” Hochstein said on his first visit to Beirut since the war started.
Resolution “1701 was successful at ending the war in 2006, but we must be honest that no one did anything to implement it,” he said. “Both sides simply committing to 1701 is just not enough.”
“We have to put things in place that would allow for confidence that it will be implemented for everyone,” he told a news conference after meeting Hezbollah-allied Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. “We have to know this is not just going to another round of conflict in a month or a year or two years.”
The US envoy was last in Beirut in August, after months of shuttle diplomacy between Lebanon and Israel with the aim of averting a full-blown conflict.
Yesterday he met with Berri, while Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit also visited the speaker’s Beirut residence as part of a one-day trip. Hochstein also met Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, who is pushing for a diplomatic solution tied to UN Resolution 1701.
Despite the resolution’s provisions, Hezbollah remained in south Lebanon and in October last year began launching low-intensity cross-border strikes into Israel, in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas.
The US wants to see the conflict end “as soon as possible,” Hochstein told reporters.
“Tying Lebanon’s future to other conflicts in the region was not and is not in the interest of the Lebanese people,” he said, referring to a key Hezbollah demand that any ceasefire in Lebanon be linked to an end to the war in Gaza.
Israel struck branches of al-Qard al-Hassan, a Hezbollah-linked financial group, in Beirut, south Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley, according to Lebanese state media.
The strikes marked an expansion of Israel’s nearly month-long war with Hezbollah, as it seeks to degrade the group’s ability to fund operations.
The raids came as the Iran-backed Hezbollah said it was engaging in close-range combat with Israeli troops in border villages amid an Israeli ground operation that started last month.
After meeting Berri, Aboul Gheit called for the “immediate withdrawal” of Israeli forces from Lebanese territory, calling for the urgent enforcement of Resolution 1701.
He said that “1701 is a pivotal resolution... I see it as a resolution that is appropriate for immediate implementation.”
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