Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has directed his cabinet to begin ceasefire talks with Lebanon \u201cas soon as possible\u201d, a day after his country unleashed the largest-scale attacks yet on its neighbour, killing at least 300 people and injuring 1,150.<\/p>\n
In an X statement in Hebrew on Thursday, Netanyahu said he had made the request after \u201crepeated calls\u201d from Beirut to open direct talks but confirmed that Israel is still striking Hezbollah \u2013 even as analysts warn that the attacks could derail peace talks between the United States and Iran set to begin on Saturday in Pakistan.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Israel\u2019s heaviest bombing of Lebanon on Wednesday came without usual warnings, just hours after the US and Iran announced a ceasefire in the US-Israel war on Iran that began on February 28.<\/p>\n Strikes continued in Lebanon on Friday morning, although at a reduced pace. Hezbollah, too, has fired missiles into Israel.<\/p>\n Experts say Wednesday\u2019s bloody attacks were likely designed to derail Tehran\u2019s talks with the US, as Iran has insisted that halting fire on both Iran and Lebanon would form the basis for any negotiations.<\/p>\n Iran-backed Hezbollah began hitting Israel in defence of Tehran, opening up another front in the US-Israel war. Israel says its retaliation and consequent invasion of southern Lebanon are aimed at targeting fighter positions, but thousands of civilians have died, and more than one million people have been displaced.<\/p>\n Israel occupied southern Lebanon for 18 years from 1982 in response to armed attacks from Palestinian fighters, and Hezbollah was formed in resistance to that invasion.<\/p>\n The group has since morphed into a political party represented in parliament, but its armed wing, described as equivalent to a medium-sized army and stronger than the Lebanese military, has remained active.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what we know about the Lebanese-Israeli talks:<\/p>\n As of Friday morning, both the Israeli and Lebanese governments have signalled willingness to hold peace talks, but Israel\u2019s continued bombing of the country is causing scepticism among analysts as to its real intentions.<\/p>\n For Israel, disarming Hezbollah is a priority, Netanyahu reiterated in a televised address on Thursday, adding that Israel would continue striking the group even as he directed ceasefire talks to start.<\/p>\n In an X statement, Israeli army chief Eyal Zamir said on Friday: \u201cWe continue to fight against Hezbollah with great intensity \u2026 we are prepared to resume fighting with great determination if required at any given moment.\u201d<\/p>\n Lebanese Prime Minister Joseph Aoun, in his response to Netanyahu\u2019s announcement of talks, said he welcomed the move.<\/p>\n However, Beirut has insisted that there will be no negotiations with the country under fire.<\/p>\n Israel may have no choice but to comply, analysts say, as reports emerge that Washington, racing to protect its talks with Iran as a priority, is applying pressure. The US has even offered to mediate and host Israeli and Lebanese negotiators, an unnamed US official told AFP news agency.<\/p>\n The Wall Street Journal reported that US President Donald Trump pressured Netanyahu to stop bombing Lebanon after Wednesday\u2019s barrage of bombs.<\/p>\n In a shorter than usual phone call, Trump delivered a stern warning to Netanyahu over Israel\u2019s actions in Lebanon, the WSJ reported.<\/p>\n The US president confirmed to NBC on Thursday that he spoke with Netanyahu and that Israel will \u201cbe sort of a little more low-key\u201d.<\/p>\n Vice President JD Vance also said that Israel has agreed to \u201ccheck itself\u201d in Lebanon.<\/p>\n Israel is also under pressure from its European allies, particularly Germany and France, to cease attacks on Lebanon.<\/p>\n But talks between the Lebanese and Israeli governments \u2013 if they happen \u2013 will be uneasy, Al Jazeera\u2019s Zeina Khodr said, reporting from Beirut.<\/p>\n While the Lebanese government itself banned Hezbollah\u2019s military wing in March, blaming it for dragging Lebanon into the US-Israel war on Iran, Beirut will insist on a halt to all hostilities before any talks, she said.<\/p>\n On the other hand, Hezbollah, which holds 15 of 128 seats in parliament, has rejected any talks with Israel.<\/p>\n Analysts say Iran\u2019s insistence on including Lebanon in the agreement, while beneficial, also risks the ire of the government in Beirut. Lebanon, they say, wants a greater say over when it enters or exits a war.<\/p>\n Iran was clear in its 10-point proposal to the US that Israel and Washington must halt attacks on all of its allies \u2013 including Hezbollah \u2013 for the two-week ceasefire announced on Tuesday to hold and for negotiations to begin.<\/p>\n Against that backdrop, Israel\u2019s continued bombardment of Lebanon is now violating Tehran\u2019s red lines, analysts point out, and could derail the fragile truce between the US and Iran.<\/p>\n Israel said it killed an aide to Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem in the major escalation on Wednesday and confirmed on Friday it still had troops in southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n Iran has condemned the attacks on Lebanon, saying it is a \u201cgrave violation\u201d of its deal with the US and has threatened \u201cstrong responses\u201d.<\/p>\n Middle East analyst Mohamad Elmasry said Tehran will likely insist on a Lebanon ceasefire in the Islamabad talks.<\/p>\n Not doing so \u201cwould be stabbing the Lebanese, stabbing Hezbollah in the back\u201d from Iran\u2019s point of view, Elmasry told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cThey understand Israel is on a path to a \u2018Greater Israel\u2019, as they call it; they are going through systematically country by country \u2026\u00a0 so it\u2019s really important for the entire region that Israel stops.\u201d<\/p>\n After Iran and the US confirmed Tuesday\u2019s ceasefire, thousands of displaced people in Lebanon began returning to their homes in celebration.<\/p>\n Iran, in its statements, had said the two-week ceasefire included the Lebanon front.<\/p>\n Pakistan\u2019s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who negotiated the talks, said in his statement that the US and Israel, \u201calong with their allies, have agreed to an immediate ceasefire everywhere including Lebanon and elsewhere, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY\u201d.<\/p>\n The US did not initially comment on Lebanon in its statements. Trump did say that \u201calmost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran\u201d.<\/p>\n He also called Iran\u2019s 10-point plan \u201cworkable\u201d.<\/p>\n But after Wednesday\u2019s devastating bombing in Beirut, Trump said Lebanon was never a part of the ceasefire deal with Iran. The White House doubled down on that assertion, insisting that Lebanon was not a part of the agreement. US Vice President JD Vance, who is expected to lead his country\u2019s delegation at the talks in Islamabad on Saturday, also said that the Iranians had a \u201cgenuine misunderstanding\u201d \u2014 and that Lebanon was not included in the truce.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, Vance said that Israel would reduce the intensity of its attacks on Lebanon to give the Islamabad dialogue a chance, a claim that Trump echoed on Thursday.<\/p>\n Pakistan\u2019s Sharif described the attacks as \u201cviolations of ceasefire \u2026 across the conflict zone\u201d in an X statement on the same day without directly mentioning Israel.<\/p>\n But while Israel\u2019s Friday morning attacks on Lebanon were not as big as Wednesday\u2019s strikes, Israeli army chief Eyal Zamir has said his forces were not following any ceasefire in Lebanon.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one seems to agree about what everyone agreed about,\u201d Rob Geist Pinfold, a lecturer at King\u2019s College London, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t know what both sides think they agreed to. And then you have the added complication, which is particularly pertinent to Lebanon, that various parties to the conflict were not represented at the table. The Gulf states were not represented, and [neither was] Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has directed his cabinet to begin ceasefire talks with Lebanon \u201cas soon as possible\u201d, a day after his country unleashed the largest-scale attacks yet on its neighbour, killing at least 300 people and injuring 1,150. In an X statement in Hebrew on Thursday, Netanyahu said he had made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18379,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
![\"Lebanon](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/AP26099435614584-1775810469.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C514&quality=80\")
Are ceasefire talks really happening?<\/h2>\n
![\"Mother](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/reuters_69d83cf2-1775779058.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
Why does Lebanon matter for the US-Iran ceasefire negotiations?<\/h2>\n
Why was there confusion over whether Lebanon was included in Iran-US talks?<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"