By Rami Ayyub, Maya Gebeily and Michael Martina
JERUSALEM/BEIRUT/WASHINGTON, June 26 (Reuters) – Israel and Lebanon signed a framework agreement in Washington on Friday following several days of talks to secure an end to fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants.
Lebanese Ambassador Nada Moawad and her Israeli counterpart Yechiel Leiter signed the trilateral document with the U.S. at the State Department in Washington.
“Today we’ve taken the first step in what will be a difficult journey, without a doubt, but an important and an essential and a necessary one,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said before the agreement was inked.
The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah broke out when the armed group fired at Israel on March 2, days after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran. The Hezbollah attacks triggered Israeli air and ground attacks that have killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon and displaced more than a million.
The officials did not provide details of the framework deal and did not say how its terms would differ from those included in an April 16 ceasefire deal that preceded several rounds of U.S.-brokered Israel-Lebanon talks.
“The trilateral framework we signed today is a first step on the road to restoring Lebanese sovereignty and territorial integrity, securing a permanent and final cessation of hostilities, enabling our people to go back to their land, and allowing all Lebanese to live in peace, security, and prosperity,” Moawad said.
Leiter praised Moawad for negotiating like a “lioness.”
“In this performance-based trilateral framework agreement, Iran is out, Hezbollah is out, and the road to peace between Israel and Lebanon is in,” he said.
They did not take questions from reporters.
Israel’s death toll from this round of hostilities with Hezbollah includes at least 32 soldiers and four Israeli civilians. Hezbollah does not release figures on its war dead. Reuters reported on May 4 that several thousand Hezbollah fighters had been killed in the war.
The talks in Washington have included discussions on a proposal for Israeli forces to hand some of the territory they occupied in southern Lebanon to Lebanon’s military.
A State Department official told Reuters on Thursday that Israel had agreed to pull back from some of that territory, something Israeli and Lebanese officials denied.
Before the talks resumed this week, Israel and Hezbollah agreed to halt fire even as Israel kept troops in occupied southern Lebanon — territory it describes as a “buffer zone” aimed at thwarting Hezbollah attacks on northern Israel.
Violence has persisted since the ceasefire, with Israel saying on Friday its troops had struck and killed what the military described as seven Hezbollah members who were operating near the territory it is occupying. Reuters could not confirm this.
ISRAEL DROPS LEAFLETS ORDERING RESIDENTS OF LEBANESE TOWN TO FLEE
Israeli forces dropped leaflets over the southern Lebanese town of Mansouri on Friday ordering residents to leave, Lebanese state media reported, the first such order issued since the latest ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect.
A senior Lebanese military official said Israel had recently added Mansouri to its occupation zone. The official said Lebanese farmers had continued to enter and leave the town, but had not been living there.
An Israeli military spokesperson said the military issued what it described as a “reminder” to the civilian population that “the area is within the security zone in which (Israeli) soldiers operate. It’s a reminder not to be in the area so they won’t be harmed.”
Lebanese officials say Israeli troops are enforcing the zone’s northern boundary by firing at anyone approaching it, including civilians and Lebanese soldiers.
(Reporting by Maya Gebeily, Jana Choukeir and Rami Ayyub; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise, Andrew Heavens, Philippa Fletcher and Alistair Bell)
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