Report: Mediators want Hezbollah to halt attacks when Gaza war enters 3rd phase
Lebanese authorities and political officials are awaiting the full results of French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s recent visit to Tel Aviv, at a time the U.S. has sent messages to Lebanon through an Arab mediator, media reports said.
“U.S., French and Arab mediators are focusing on one point, which is that the start of the third phase of the war on Gaza will entail a very different frequency of military operations leading to a near-complete ceasefire, which would allow for convincing Hezbollah to halt its operations along the border with occupied Palestine,” al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Thursday.
“Mediators said they estimate that the third phase will begin in early February, during which the occupation army will withdraw from most areas of the Gaza Strip and redeploy within a tight belt along the border with the Strip, while keeping deployment points in the central region, specifically in the Gaza Valley area,” the daily said.
“Broad military operations, including invasions and major airstrikes, will stop, and Israel will declare that it would reserve the right to continue the operations aimed at eradicating Hamas and recovering its captives,” al-Akhbar quoted the mediators as saying.
Mediators have said that “the continuation of the support fronts in Lebanon or other frontiers will no longer be justified with the halt of the major military operations” in Gaza, the daily added.
“It seems that the enemy is very much counting on this mediation to achieve a host of objectives, seeing as Israel believes that Hezbollah has an essential and major role in everything that is also happening in Syria, Iraq and even Yemen,” al-Akhbar said.
Israel wants “a bigger presence for the U.N. forces and the Lebanese Army in a manner that would prevent the return of the resistance members to the border fence,” the newspaper added.
According to mediators, this would allow Israel’s government to ask settlers to return to their settlements near the border with Lebanon and to gradually restore normal life in this region, especially that the mediators are saying that there is a big crisis due to the displacement of more than 125,000 settlers to Israel’s center and south, al-Akhbar said.
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