\n<\/p>\n
Beirut, Lebanon \u2013<\/strong> At a store in Beirut, a shopowner breaks into laughter.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, I don\u2019t want to comment on the negotiations,\u201d he told Al Jazeera, referring to Thursday evening\u2019s direct talks between Israel and Lebanon in Washington, DC. \u201cIf I say the wrong thing, someone might come hit me.\u201d<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n His response represents the polarisation and controversy surrounding the negotiations inside a country deeply divided over the best way to end Israel\u2019s war on it.<\/p>\n For some, the negotiations are the Lebanese state\u2019s only choice. Others, however, reject the talks outright and believe only Hezbollah\u2019s path of armed resistance will lead to a positive outcome for Lebanon.<\/p>\n On March 2, Israel intensified its war on Lebanon once again. That came after Hezbollah responded to incessant Israeli attacks for the first time in more than 15 months. Hezbollah said its response was also a retaliation for the Israeli-US killing of Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei two days earlier.<\/p>\n Israel has killed 2,294 people in Lebanon since March 2, including journalists and medics. It has also displaced more than 1.2 million people while expanding its invasion of Lebanon and establishing what it calls a \u201cyellow line\u201d around 10km (6 miles) from the border. Residents are not allowed to return to their homes if they are within that Israeli-claimed buffer zone, and Israel has demolished homes and villages in it.<\/p>\n Al Jazeera visited three towns \u2013 al-Mansouri, Majdal Zoun, and Qlaileh \u2013 on a tour organised by Hezbollah, the Lebanese political and military group that controls the area. The towns were rife with destruction, with buildings reduced to dust and rubble.<\/p>\n Thursday\u2019s talks are set to take place while Israel is still on Lebanese land and conducting demolitions and attacks on targets there. On Wednesday, Israel killed five people in Lebanon, including front-line reporter Amal Khalil. And on Thursday, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported that an Israeli attack had killed three people.<\/p>\n The talks are the first direct negotiations between the two sides in decades and follow an initial meeting on April 14 in Washington, DC. They will bring together Lebanon and Israel\u2019s ambassadors to the United States, as well as the US ambassadors to Lebanon \u2013 Michael Issa \u2013 and Israel \u2013 Mike Huckabee \u2013 with the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. All were present in the initial meeting, apart from Huckabee.<\/p>\n The Lebanese side will ask for an extension to the current ceasefire, which Israel has repeatedly violated, as a precondition for continuing the talks. Lebanon\u2019s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has said his country will also seek a full Israeli withdrawal and the return of Lebanese captives held by Israel.<\/p>\n For its part, Hezbollah has rejected the talks. And a day before the previous talks earlier in April, hundreds of protesters descended on downtown Beirut to show their opposition to the talks, too.<\/p>\n Some of these opposing talks believe that Iran, Hezbollah\u2019s longtime benefactor, has more leverage to negotiate on its behalf. But others oppose the talks simply because they believe the Lebanese state has little leverage and because Israel rarely delivers or upholds its end of bargains.<\/p>\n \u201cProbably the only deal that\u2019s possible right now at the moment is anything that\u2019s very favourable to Israel, as we have seen in the past many years, and especially since Lebanon is going there unprepared, with no leverage and no deterrence,\u201d Fouad Debs, a lawyer, told Al Jazeera. \u201cThe only deterrence that they have at the moment is the resistance [Hezbollah], and the government and president are fighting it internally.\u201d<\/p>\n Debs said that Lebanon could look at other pathways, such as going to the International Criminal Court and teaming up with the growing number of countries that are trying to hold Israel accountable.<\/p>\n Shortly after Hezbollah\u2019s attacks on March 2, the Lebanese government declared Hezbollah\u2019s military activities illegal.<\/p>\n Hezbollah\u2019s weapons have long been a point of contention in Lebanon. In 1990, when the Lebanese civil war ended after 15 years, all militias handed over their arms. But Hezbollah members kept theirs as a means of opposing Israeli occupation in south Lebanon.<\/p>\n When Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon in 2000, the debate about Hezbollah\u2019s weapons renewed. That would prove to be the pinnacle of the group\u2019s domestic popularity, as internal disputes over its arms followed. Today, Hezbollah enjoys little support in Lebanon outside of the Shia Muslim community.<\/p>\n After the 2024 ceasefire brought Israel\u2019s last intensification to an end, the Lebanese state vowed to disarm Hezbollah. It assigned the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) with the task. And while the LAF made some progress, Hezbollah\u2019s critics, including Israelis and Americans, argued that it hadn\u2019t moved fast enough.<\/p>\n Now, following Israeli attacks that have left thousands dead and more than a million displaced, some Lebanese are calling for a different strategy.<\/p>\n \u201cLebanese history with Israel is full of blood,\u201d Jad Shahrour, a communications manager at the Samir Kassir Foundation, told Al Jazeera, adding that any negotiations must take that history into account.<\/p>\n Shahrour said he believes that negotiations do not necessarily mean full normalisation. Instead, he said, he sees negotiations as a first step in the state reasserting its authority over Lebanon.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat options do we have besides this?\u201d he asked rhetorically. \u201cDo we have any power? No. But did Hezbollah\u2019s way get the desired result? Also, no.\u201d<\/p>\n Shahrour recognised that Lebanon has little leverage.<\/p>\n \u201cOne can say they reject this. but our options are limited and it is better to try diplomacy than not try at all,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we say no. then bombing returns to Beirut, the Israelis will enter even further, and neither Hezbollah nor the state can protect the people.\u201d<\/p>\n Most people in Lebanon do not trust the Israelis to be good-faith actors, and do not see the US as a neutral party in negotiations. The difference then comes down to whether or not this is the best of all bad options \u2013 or if armed resistance, asking Iran to negotiate on Lebanon\u2019s behalf, or an international approach would be smarter moves.<\/p>\n Even with little to no leverage, however, some experts believe Lebanon has more cards it can play.<\/p>\n \u201cLebanon should establish its own terms of reference in the negotiations, not allow them to undermine the state\u2019s standing and alienate it from a regional bloc that opposes Israel,\u201d Mohanad Hage Ali, the deputy director for research at the Carnegie Middle East Center, wrote in a recent piece. \u201cA balancing act of this kind may invite criticism in the short term, but it is more likely to yield durable results over time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Beirut, Lebanon \u2013 At a store in Beirut, a shopowner breaks into laughter. \u201cNo, I don\u2019t want to comment on the negotiations,\u201d he told Al Jazeera, referring to Thursday evening\u2019s direct talks between Israel and Lebanon in Washington, DC. \u201cIf I say the wrong thing, someone might come hit me.\u201d Recommended Stories list of 4 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20094","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=20094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
A deal favourable to Israel?<\/h2>\n
A history \u2018full of blood\u2019<\/h2>\n
Little leverage<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"