President Michel Aoun announced Friday that “Lebanon is awaiting the outcome of the contacts that U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein is carrying out with the Israelis, in order to specify the course of the indirect negotiations for the demarcation of the southern maritime border.”

Aoun’s remarks come a day after Israel rejected Lebanon’s amendments to Hochstein’s latest proposal.

U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein will on Friday deliver written Israeli remarks over his proposal to Lebanon’s deputy parliament speaker Elias Bou Saab, LBCI TV reported.

“This confirms that the negotiations between the Lebanese and Israeli sides are still ongoing and have move from the phase of political negotiations to the phase of studying the legal and technical terms in a calm atmosphere away from tensions,” LBCI added.

Speaker Nabih Berri has said that Lebanon’s remarks over the sea border demarcation proposal presented by U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein are “minor,” hours after Israel rejected them through an unnamed senior official.

“Lebanon does not deal with media leaks, but rather with facts that are supposed to be carried by U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein, with whom our contacts are exclusively taking place,” Berri said in remarks to Asharq al-Awsat newspaper published Friday.

Israel’s security and political affairs cabinet has authorized “preemptive” strikes on Hezbollah if Israel determines that the Iran-backed Lebanese group is preparing to launch an attack related to the maritime gas dispute.

In its session on Thursday, the cabinet said it authorizes “the possibility of launching preemptive offensive operations” should Israel obtain “credible information” that Hezbollah is “preparing to wage an attack,” Lebanon’s pro-Hezbollah newspaper al-Akhbar reported on Friday.

ARAB ART FAIR, the First Affordable Art Fair in the region, has announced its dates for 2022. The fair will return from November 2nd to 6th, 2022 in the Yacht Club Beirut, Zaitunay Bay.

ARAB ART FAIR offers an opportunity for Art galleries and independent Artists in the region to showcase their artworks to thousands of enthusiastic art lovers.

Israel’s security and political affairs cabinet has held a session that lasted three and a half hours to discuss the Lebanese remarks to draft sea border demarcation agreement presented by U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein to both parties.

“As expected, the session did not produce any decisions and not much of its discussions has been leaked,” Lebanon’s al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Friday.

Naharnet has interviewed presidential hopeful and Lebanon’s former candidate for World Bank chief Ziad Hayek about his presidential chances and plans.

Hayek, 63, was Secretary General of Lebanon's High Council for Privatization and PPP from 2006 until he was nominated to be President of the World Bank in February 2019. Hayek is currently Vice Chair of the Bureau of the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe Working Party on PPP, Head of the International Center of Excellence in PPP for Ports, President of the World Association of PPP Units & Professionals, Member of the Board of Trustees of the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik, Member of the Investment Committee of World YMCA, and High Commissioner for Lebanon at the World Business Angels Investment Forum.

Lebanon's health minister said on Friday that authorities are inspecting suspected cases of cholera, less than a day after the cash-strapped country confirmed its first case of the illness since 1993.

The news came almost a month after an outbreak of the illness in neighboring war-torn Syria.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil on Tuesday suggested holding “national dialogue” over the presidential election, as he criticized Speaker Nabih Berri for choosing October 13 as a date for the upcoming presidential vote session.

Reciting the FPM’s “presidential priorities” paper, Bassil said the new president must “preserve national sovereignty, protect the border and the full rights, devise a defense strategy in which the state is the main authority, preserve and develop Lebanon’s ties with the world, and achieve a swift and safe repatriation of the displaced Syrians.”

Lebanon's health ministry on Thursday announced the crisis-hit country's first case of cholera in decades.

The announcement comes as neighboring war-torn Syria is struggling to contain a cholera outbreak that has spread across the country over the past month.