Prime Minister Nawaf Salam announced Wednesday that Lebanon is “ready for supra-military negotiations with Israel,” after Lebanon and Israel for the first time sent civilian figures to a meeting of the ‘Mechanism’ ceasefire committee.

“The move to include a former Lebanese diplomat on the committee is politically sound and enjoys national support,” Salam said in remarks to Al-Jazeera television.

Lebanese and Israeli civilian representatives held their first direct talks Wednesday in decades, part of a year-old ceasefire monitoring mechanism in the war with Hezbollah, a source close to the talks told AFP.

The meeting was taking place at the U.N. peacekeeping force's headquarters in Lebanon Naqoura near the border with Israel, the source said, as part of a mechanism to oversee the ceasefire that took hold in November 2024.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has appointed a non-military member in Israel's delegation to the body overseeing the ceasefire with Israel.

Netanyahu's office said Wednesday that the PM has instructed the Acting Director of the National Security Council to send a representative on his behalf to a meeting with government-economic elements in Lebanon.

The new United States ambassador to Lebanon, Michel Issa, has stated that Israel "does not require the permission of the United States" to defend itself.

Hezbollah's leader Sheikh Naim Qassem on Friday said the group has the right to respond to Israel's assassination of its top military chief in a strike on Beirut's southern suburbs last week.

In a televised speech, Qassem called the killing of Haitham Ali Tabatabai "a blatant aggression and a heinous crime,” adding that Hezbollah has "the right to respond, and we will determine the timing for that.”

The Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday submitted a complaint to the U.N. Security Council regarding Israel's construction of two concrete walls inside Lebanese territory.

In a statement, the Ministry said that it "submitted, through Lebanon's Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, a complaint to the Security Council in response to Israel's new and serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty, adding to its numerous and ongoing violations.”

British Ambassador to Lebanon Hamish Cowell and Minister of Environment Tamara al-Zein have inaugurated the “King Charles III Cedar Trail”, a new reforestation and eco-tourism initiative in the Shouf Biosphere Reserve.

The event was attended by Noura Jumblat, the mayors and makhateer of Ain Zahalta, Bmahray and Mokhtara, the head of the reserve committee Faisal Abu Ezzeddine, and the reserve's staff.

The head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc MP Mohammad Raad has said that Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah military chief Haitham Tabatabai and his companions was a “targeting of entire Lebanon -- the state, the army, the resistance and the people.”

“It is their right and duty all to act in a manner that halts the Zionist violation of the country. Coordination and integration impose themselves on everyone and no one can disavow their national duties,” Raad added, in an interview with the al-Modon news portal.

Former Central Bank governor Riad Salameh asserted in an interview with Al-Arabiya Business that he has become a “scapegoat” for the financial crisis that has plagued Lebanon in recent years, denying any connection to depositors' losses or the collapse of the banking sector.

Salameh stated that he is not implicated in any of the legal cases pending in Lebanon, France, or any other European country, noting that the Syrian war cost Lebanon $25-30 billion.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri denied, in remarks published Friday in ad-Diyar newspaper, that Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty warned Lebanon about an imminent escalation as he met with Lebanese leaders in Beirut Thursday.

"No threat was conveyed to us," Berri said, adding that the threats are coming from Israeli media and not from visiting envoys.