MIDDLE EAST FORUM
Israel Won’t Stop in Lebanon Until Hezbollah Is Crushed
Jonathan Spyer
April 13, 2026

Direct US-brokered talks between Israeli and Lebanese representatives are set to take place in Washington this week. The Israeli delegation will be headed by Yehiel Leiter, Jerusalem’s ambassador to the US. Lebanon will be represented by Nada Hamadeh, the Lebanese ambassador to Washington. The US State Department will host the negotiations. In his statement on Thursday announcing the talks, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu framed their purpose as ‘‌disarming Hezbollah and establishing peaceful ‌relations between ⁠Israel and ⁠Lebanon’. Lebanese prime minister Nawaf Salam, for his part, expressed his hope that Beirut should become a ‘demilitarised city’. Even as the talks were announced, Lebanese Hezbollah’s attacks on Israeli population centres and Israel’s wide-ranging ground and air offensive against the terror group continued. READ MORE

AXIOS Rubio to host Israeli, Lebanese ambassadors for talks amid ceasefire effort Secretary of State Marco Rubio will host on Tuesday a meeting between the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors in Washington, D.C., to launch direct negotiations between the countries. The talks, which will take place amid fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and a wide-ranging Israeli ground invasion in southern Lebanon, are going to focus on the possibility of a ceasefire and on longer term disarming of Hezbollah, along with a peace deal between the countries, sources say. This is going to be the most high-level direct meeting between Israel and Lebanon since 1993.