US working on 60-day truce to end war in Lebanon, sources say

WASHINGTON – US mediators are working on a proposal to halt hostilities between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, beginning with a 60-day ceasefire, two sources with knowledge of the talks said on Oct 30, but Israel pressed its offensive, ordering residents to evacuate Lebanon’s eastern city of Baalbek.

The sources – a person briefed on the talks and a senior diplomat working on Lebanon – told Reuters the two-month period would be used to finalise the full implementation of United Nations Security Council resolution 1701, adopted in 2006 to keep southern Lebanon free of arms outside state control.

“We’d like to reiterate that we seek a diplomatic resolution that fully implements 1701, and gets both Israeli and Lebanese citizens back to their homes on both sides of the border,” said Ms Sama Habib, spokeswoman at the US embassy in Beirut, when asked about the proposal.

The latest effort comes as Israel’s operation against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon continues to expand. Its army on Oct 30 issued a first evacuation order for Baalbek, where tens of thousands of mostly Shi’ite Muslim Lebanese, including many who had fled other areas, were residing.

Such notices are usually followed by bombardment, and governor Bachir Khodr called on residents to evacuate to the north.

Lebanese civil defence’s regional head Bilal Raad said the largely volunteer force had been calling on residents to leave via megaphones after receiving phone calls from someone identifying themselves as being from the Israeli military.

“People are all over each other, the whole city is in a panic trying to figure out where to go, there’s a huge traffic jam,” he said.

Some of the areas they are fleeing to are already full of displaced people.

Mr Antoine Habchi, a lawmaker representing Christian-majority Deir al-Ahmar to the northwest of Baalbek, said more than 10,000 people were already sheltering in homes, schools and churches before the evacuation order on Oct 30.

“We welcome everyone, of course, but we need immediate government help so that these people don’t stay out in the cold,” he told Reuters.

For a third straight day, Hezbollah reported intense fighting with Israeli forces in or around the southern town of Khiyam – the deepest Israel’s troops have been reported to have penetrated into Lebanon since fighting began.

Israeli strikes on south Lebanon’s Sarafand killed at least 10 people on Oct 29 – most of them women and children – while a separate strike on the port city of Sidon killed at least five people and injured 37, the Lebanese authorities said.

Resolution 1701 has been the cornerstone of talks to end the last year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which erupted in parallel with the war in Gaza and has dramatically escalated over the last five weeks.

“We’d like to reiterate that we seek a diplomatic resolution that fully implements 1701, and gets both Israeli and Lebanese citizens back to their homes on both sides of the border,” said a spokesperson at the US embassy in Beirut, when asked about the reported proposal.

US presidential envoy Amos Hochstein, who is working on the new ceasefire proposal, told reporters in Beirut earlier in October that better mechanisms for enforcement were needed as neither Israel nor Lebanon had fully implemented the resolution.

The two sources told Reuters that the 60-day truce has replaced a proposal in September by the United States and other countries that envisioned a ceasefire for 21 days as a prelude to 1701 coming into full force.

Both, however, cautioned that the deal could still fall through. “There is an earnest push to get to a ceasefire, but it is still hard to get it to materialise,” the diplomat said.

The person briefed on the talks said Israel was still pushing for the ability to carry out “direct enforcement” of the truce via air strikes or other military operations against Hezbollah if it was violating the deal.

Israel’s Channel 12 television reported that Israel was seeking a reinforced version of UN resolution 1701, to allow Israel to intervene if it felt its security threatened.

Lebanon had not yet been formally briefed on the proposal and could not comment on its details, Lebanese officials said.

The push for a ceasefire for Lebanon comes days before the US presidential election and in parallel with a similar diplomatic drive on Gaza.

Axios reported that Mr Hochstein and US presidential adviser Brett McGurk will land in Israel on Oct 31 to try to close the deal on Lebanon, which could be implemented within weeks, according to three unnamed sources.

The US State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Israeli and US officials believe that Hezbollah is finally willing to disconnect itself from Hamas in Gaza having taken major blows, including the killing of its leader Hassan Nasrallah, the Axios report said. REUTERS