WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump said the leaders of Israel and Lebanon were set to speak yesterday in what would be a historic first, but there was no confirmation from either side. 

Trump’s announcement comes as Washington pushes to ease hostilities following the first direct talks between the two countries in decades this week, when their ambassadors met in the US capital.

Lebanon was pulled into the Middle East war on 2 March after the Lebanon-based armed group Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, attacked Israel.

Since then, Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed more than 2 000 people and displaced more than a million, despite international calls for a ceasefire, and Israeli ground forces have invaded the country’s south.

“Trying to get a little breathing room between Israel and Lebanon,” Trump said Wednesday on his Truth Social platform, referring to the ambassadors meeting held in Washington the day before, the first meeting of its kind since 1993.

Trump said the leaders of Lebanon and Israel would speak yesterday, without identifying participants or giving details.

An official Lebanese source told AFP however that “we are not aware of any planned contact with the Israeli side, and we have not been informed of any through official channels”.

Asked by AFP about Trump’s announcement, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made no comment.

Analyst Michael Young of the Carnegie Middle East Centre told AFP that there had never before been contact between the leaders of Lebanon and Israel.

In September 1982, Bachir Gemayel, elected Lebanese president in the wake of an Israeli invasion, met with Israeli leaders but was assassinated before taking office.

In 1992 and 1993, diplomats from the two countries met in Washington in the wake of a Middle East peace process launched at a conference in Madrid.

A senior US administration official stressed that any end to the hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon is not part of talks between Washington and Tehran. 

– Nampa/AFP