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By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
The Biden administration’s two top Middle East advisers are coming to Israel to try to negotiate a ceasefire with Hezbollah, Walla reported Wednesday.
Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and present an American proposal that could end the fighting in Lebanon “within weeks,” the news site said, and allow 60,000 residents of the north to return to their homes after a year in limbo since being evacuated for their own safety.
According to Walla, they waited until Netanyahu held an hours-long meeting with senior ministers and the heads of Israel’s security bodies Tuesday night to discuss and decide upon the potential parameters of a deal.
Israeli officials told the news site that the fact that McGurk and Hochstein are arriving is a sign that the prime minister is ready to move forward on a diplomatic end to the war.
The Jerusalem Post cited Wednesday an Israeli source who said that the IDF would not leave southern Lebanon until there is “an effective solution” to prevent the terror group from reinstating itself on Israel’s border.
Israel has repeatedly declared its demand that the binding UN Security Council’s Resolution 1701 that ended the Second Lebanon War in 2006 must finally be fully implemented.
This would push Hezbollah forces beyond the Litani River, which for the most part runs several kilometers beyond Israel’s border. This would at least put an effective end to the threat of anti-tank missiles and short-range rockets being fired into northern communities.
It would also prevent the construction of sophisticated tunnel networks for an invasion force and the storage of advanced weaponry in Lebanese villages close to the border, which the IDF has found in abundance in recent weeks and blown up.
UNSC 1701 envisioned the Lebanese Army taking over the area, although it is not necessarily a more neutral force, because Hezbollah is known to have infiltrated the country’s official armed forces.
The Post cited a source who said that the American deal now envisions the UN’s peacekeeping force, UNIFIL, in that space, although over the last 18 years UNIFIL did nothing to prevent the Hezbollah build-up on the border or launching rockets, UAVs and other deadly projectiles at Israel.
Ynet reported Wednesday that Israel has asked Germany, France and Britain if they would be willing to beef up or maybe replace the current UNIFIL force, perhaps with the thought that those countries would commit more to its official peacekeeping mandate.
According to this report, a deal would begin with a 60-day military lull, when 5-10,000 Lebanese army troops would deploy along Israel’s northern border along with UNIFIL, and Hezbollah retreating beyond the Litani.
Some kind of supervisory international mechanism is being negotiated as well to ensure compliance, said the report, with Israel demanding the right to re-enter Lebanon if Hezbollah violates the accord.
The last element being discussed is how to prevent Hezbollah from rearming, either by land, sea or air. The report said that Russia has expressed willingness to enforce such an embargo, and that Israeli officials are talking to Moscow about the issue.
Walla cited unnamed American and Israeli officials as saying that they believe that after the blows the Iranian terror proxy has suffered over the last two months, Hezbollah is finally ready to pursue its own deal with Jerusalem instead of maintaining its stance that it would only stop its attacks when Hamas arranges a ceasefire with Israel.
Report: Biden administration leaked details of Israeli operation in Lebanon
The extremist Shiite organization has lost several thousand fighters in its yearlong confrontation with the IDF, most importantly its entire senior military command and its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, whom the IDF assassinated earlier this month in his underground Beirut compound.
It is not toothless yet by any means, as proven by the loss of some two dozen soldiers in southern Lebanon since the IDF incursion began early this month with dozens more injured, some very seriously.
In addition, dozens of missiles are still being fired every day, mostly at the north, with one killing a man in Ma’alot-Tarshiha Tuesday and another killing two in the Arab town of Majd al-Krum Friday.
Longer range rockets have also reached deeper into Israel, with the Sharon region being targeted Wednesday morning, and shrapnel from at least one missile falling over Haifa.
The terrorists are also launching UAVs nearly every day, with the latest one hitting a factory in Nahariya’s industrial zone overnight Wednesday.
