UNSC delegation meets Lebanon’s Aoun, tours south amid Israeli escalation 

Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun has met with a visiting United Nations Security Council (UNSC) delegation to discuss escalating tensions with Israel and efforts to disarm Hezbollah, a day after a wave of Israeli raids rocked the south of the country, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA).

Speaking with the UNSC team on Friday, Aoun urged them to pressure Israel to respect a November 2024 ceasefire it has violated on a near-daily basis and to withdraw from areas it continues to occupy in southern Lebanon.

“We look forward to pressure from your side,” said Aoun, in comments carried by the NNA.

Aoun earlier said the UN delegation, which is also due to meet with Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and Lebanese army commander Rodolphe Haykal, would tour southern Lebanon to check “the situation on the ground”. The trip would help the delegation “see the real picture of what is happening there”, as the army works to implement a plan to dismantle Hezbollah’s weapons, said Aoun.

The UN visit comes amid tentative signs of potential deeper engagement between Lebanon and Israel, which have technically been at war since 1948.

On Wednesday, civilian representatives from the two states held their first direct talks in decades, in a move hailed by the United States as a step towards “security, stability and a durable peace”.

Salam said the meetings were “positive” but downplayed their significance, saying they were not part of any path towards normalisation and focused only on implementing the 2024 truce.

Then, on Thursday, Israel’s military carried out attacks in four southern Lebanese villages – its latest of hundreds, despite the 2024 truce, claiming to target Hezbollah infrastructure, but that have killed dozens of civilians and destroyed residential buildings and critical infrastructure.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Beirut, Zeina Khodr, said the strikes sent a message that “negotiations will be held under fire, until Hezbollah is fully disarmed.”

Aoun’s Information Minister Paul Morcos said the government views negotiations with Israel, set to restart on December 19, as the only way forward. “There is no other option but negotiation. This is the reality, and this is what history has taught us about wars,” Aoun, a former chief of the Lebanese army, said at a cabinet meeting, according to Morcos.

Aoun stressed “the need for the language of negotiation – not the language of war – to prevail”, and that there would be no concession over Lebanon’s sovereignty, added Morcos.

The November 2024 ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon called for both states to halt hostilities, with Lebanon responsible for preventing armed groups from attacking Israel and Israel committed to ending offensive military actions.

However, Israeli forces continue to occupy at least five positions inside Lebanese territory and have not withdrawn despite the agreement’s terms. They have also conducted near-daily attacks across Lebanon that have killed more than 300 people, including at least 127 civilians, according to the UN.

Israel claims its operations are targeting Hezbollah members and infrastructure to prevent the armed group from rebuilding its military capabilities and reemerging as a force in the country.

Lebanon’s government has committed to disarming Hezbollah, but the group’s leader, Naim Qassem, has flatly rejected the idea as long as Israel continues to bombard and occupy Lebanon.

Qassem said in recent days that the armed group has the right to respond to Israel’s assassination of its top military chief in a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs last month.

Qassem called the killing of Haytham Ali Tabatabai “a blatant aggression and a heinous crime”, adding that Hezbollah has “the right to respond, and we will determine the timing for that”.