WASHINGTON — Lebanese army officials met with Israeli military officers at the Pentagon on Friday amid a mounting Israeli ground offensive that has put the Lebanese government in an increasingly paralyzed position as Washington presses the two sides to cooperate on weakening Hezbollah.
The Israeli delegation, headed by Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter, also included national security council senior Joseph Draznin, head of the Israeli military strategic division Amichai Levin, and other senior military officers. The Lebanese delegation, led by army operations director Brig. Gen. George Rizkallah, was expected to press the Israeli officials to halt their ongoing offensive in Lebanon’s south and abide by the April 17 ceasefire brokered by the United States.
Why it matters: The nearly day-long meetings marked a continuation of the first formal talks between the two countries in decades, along with a parallel political dialogue track set up by the Trump administration as it aims to press both sides toward diplomatic normalization. Israel and Lebanon have technically been at war since 1948 and do not mutually recognize their border demarcation.
The talks come amid a wider push by the Trump administration to reach a diplomatic end to the US and Israeli war with Iran, even as Washington has moved to capitalize on Iran and its proxies’ widespread losses inflicted during recent conflicts.
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