Israel and Lebanon are ‘some distance away’ from reaching any agreement
Abdullah Al-Arian, an associate professor of history at Georgetown University, Qatar, says the intensity of Israel’s military activity in Lebanon shows that the two countries are “quite some distance away from reaching any kind of an agreement”.
“We’ve seen now that the Israeli forces are willing to target UNIFIL positions, that the Lebanese military itself is being targeted,” Al-Arian told Al Jazeera, adding that the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 is “more a question of Lebanese state sovereignty and its violation, repeated violations by Israel”.
Al-Arian said as long as Israel insists on maintaining the right to “violate” Lebanese sovereignty as a “condition of the negotiation”, a ceasefire agreement is unlikely.
Lebanese PM says Israel’s attack on its army is rejection of ceasefire efforts
Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said Israel’s attack on an army centre in the town of al-Amiriya in southern Lebanon is a rejection of any potential ceasefire.
“The messages of the Israeli enemy, rejecting any solution, continue and are written in Lebanese blood, in a brazen rejection of the solution being discussed,” Mikati said in a post on X.
“The government, which expressed its commitment to implementing international resolution 1701 and strengthening the army’s presence in the south, calls on the countries of the world and international institutions to assume their responsibilities,” he added.
Resolution 1701, implemented after the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, called for the Lebanese armed forces and UN peacekeepers to be the only military presence between the border with Israel and the Litani River, about 30km (19 miles) to the north.
Israel names Netanyahu ally as US ambassador
The Israeli government says it had approved the nomination of Yechiel Leiter, an ally of Netanyahu, as the country’s ambassador to the United States. The announcement comes after US President-elect Donald Trump named hardline conservative Mike Huckabee as his choice for US ambassador to Israel under his incoming administration.
“The government has unanimously approved the appointment of Dr Yechiel Leiter as ambassador to the United States,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
A former adviser to Netanyahu, Leiter, 65, is originally from the United States and currently lives in a settlement in the occupied West Bank. Close to the US Republican Party, Leiter used to be one of the leaders of the Yesha Council, an umbrella group representing Israeli settlers in the West Bank in the 1990s.
He is also a member of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party and currently works as a strategic adviser to Israeli think tanks. His son, Moshe Leiter, was killed in combat in November 2023 in the Gaza Strip.
Yechiel Leiter will take on the ambassador role after Trump’s inauguration next year, succeeding Mike Herzog, President Isaac Herzog’s brother, who was appointed in 2021. Leiter is a fierce critic of outgoing US President Joe Biden, slamming “American pressure” during the war in Gaza in an interview with private Israeli channel Tov in January.
