Beirut to study truce proposal in war with Israel

Photo: Eyad Baba Agence France-Presse A young Palestinian woman watches the funeral of a victim on Friday in the Gaza Strip.

Agence France-Presse in Beirut

Published at 10:19 Updated at 15:58

• Middle East

Lebanon is studying a US proposal for a truce in the war between Hezbollah and Israel, Lebanese officials said Friday, as the Palestinian Hamas said it was ready for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip with the Israeli army.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, triggered on October 7, 2023 by an attack of unprecedented scale by Hamas on Israeli soil, multiple diplomatic initiatives have failed, with Hamas and Israel accusing each other of blocking any agreement.

For its part, Hezbollah opened a front in October 2023 against Israel in support of its Palestinian ally, and after a year of cross-border exchanges of fire in southern Lebanon, the powerful Islamist movement and the Israeli army went to war on September 23.

Expected response

A senior Lebanese official told AFP that US Ambassador to Beirut Lisa Johnson had presented Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri with a 13-point plan that includes a 60-day truce and the deployment of the army to southern Lebanon, on the border.

A second Lebanese government source confirmed that a proposal was under consideration.

“Mr. Berri asked for a three-day extension,” the first official said, adding that Israel had not yet responded.

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Since September 23, the Israeli army has been conducting intense bombardments in Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah strongholds in the south, east and suburbs of Beirut. It began a ground offensive in the south of the country a week later.

New “violent” Israeli raids targeted the southern suburbs of Beirut on Friday, the Lebanese news agency ANI reported.

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The Israeli army said on Friday evening that it had earlier carried out a series of strikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut against Hezbollah targets, including “command centers” of the movement. She said she had previously warned the population in the area.

More than 3,440 people have died in Lebanon since September 23, the majority civilians, according to the Health Ministry.

Israel says it wants to neutralize the pro-Iranian movement in the southern border regions of Lebanon to allow the return home of some 60,000 residents of the north of the country displaced by Hezbollah fire.

At the same time, the Israeli army continued strikes in the Gaza Strip, particularly in Deir el-Balah, in the center.

“I was woken up by the bombing at 2:30 a.m. [local time],” Mohamed Baraka, a Palestinian standing among the rubble and shards of glass littering the ruins of his house destroyed by a strike, told AFPTV. It reported “three martyrs and 15 wounded” and called on “the world to end the war.”

The UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) further reported that “several displaced Palestinians” had been “killed in attacks in the al-Mawasi area” in the center of the territory.

Since October 2023, the Israeli offensive in Gaza has left 43,764 dead, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas government's Health Ministry.

The Israeli military operations, which have plunged the Palestinian territory into a serious humanitarian crisis, have weakened Hamas.

“Stop the aggression”

“Hamas is ready to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip in the event that a ceasefire proposal is presented and on condition that [Israel] respects it,” a member of its political bureau, Bassem Naïm, assured AFP, calling on “the American administration and Trump to put pressure on the Israeli government to stop the aggression” Gaza.

Donald Trump, who is due to take office in January, has promised to bring peace to the region.

Mr. Naim reiterated that Hamas wanted a “serious deal for a prisoner swap” of Palestinians held by Israel for hostages taken on October 7, 2023, to Gaza.

During the Hamas attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data including hostages killed or killed in captivity, 251 people were abducted on Israeli soil.

In total, 97 remain hostages in Gaza, 34 of whom have been declared dead by the army.

Islamic Jihad, the armed Palestinian group that participated in the October 7, 2023 attack, released a video excerpt on Friday of hostage Sacha Trupanov, addressing a member of the Israeli government coalition, asking him to help free him and the other hostages.

More than 100 hostages had been released by the end of November 2023 under the only truce applied in more than a year of war.

In a report released on Friday, some thirty NGOs also accused the Israeli army of encouraging the looting of humanitarian aid in Gaza, in particular by attacking Palestinian police forces who are trying to combat it.