Truce possible if Israel stops attacks and assassinations, says Lebanese official

Hezbollah and Speaker Nabih Berri told U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein during his latest Beirut visit that there might be “a new phase on the southern front if the Israelis stop the war and the assassinations,” describing such a phase as a “truce,” a senior Lebanese official said.

Hochstein considered this stance “encouraging, seeing as Hezbollah did not link pacification and the truce to the end of security operations in occupied Palestine, but rather to their end in Lebanon, specifically in the south,” the official told Kuwait’s al-Anbaa newspaper in remarks published Wednesday.

Asked about what Lebanon should expect should there be a truce in the south, the senior official said: “Hochstein will swiftly arrive in the region to kick off negotiations over finalizing the land border (between Lebanon and Israel) and upgrading the cessation of hostilities stipulated in U.N. resolution 1701 into a (permanent) ceasefire.”