AFP via Getty ImagesIsrael launched a blitz of air strikes on Lebanon on Wednesday, hitting over 100 targets in 10 minutesIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered his government to begin direct talks with Lebanon, he said in a statement on Thursday.
Netanyahu said the talks would focus on the disarmament of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese political and militant group, and establishing peaceful relations.
A US State Department official confirmed it would host a meeting next week "to discuss ongoing ceasefire negotiations with Israel and Lebanon".
Lebanese officials called for a ceasefire before the talks begin, but Netanyahu in a subsequent address to residents of northern Israel said: "There is no ceasefire in Lebanon."
The Israeli military continued to strike Lebanon on Thursday - targeting what it described as Hezbollah rocket launch sites in the south. It also issued a new evacuation warning for residents in the southern suburbs of the capital, Beirut.
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on X that this included the Jnah area, which includes two major hospitals.
"At this time, no alternative medical facilities are available to receive approximately 450 patients from the two hospitals (including 40 patients in the ICU), rendering their evacuation operationally unfeasible," he said.
Among those being treated at the hospitals, Tedros added, were some of the 1,150 people that Lebanon's health ministry said were wounded in Wednesday's massive wave of Israeli strikes. At least 303 people were killed.
Tedros also said that the headquarters of the Ministry of Public Health, which "hosts five shelters accommodating more than 5,000 people", is in the evacuation area.
That ceasefire began with confusion over whether Lebanon, Israel's second front, was to be included. Iranian officials and mediators from Pakistan said it was, US and Israeli officials said clearly that it was not.
Amid the confusion, the wave of Israeli strikes on Lebanon – the heaviest since the conflict began six weeks ago – prompted Iran to declare that Israel was breaking the terms of the ceasefire, to once again halt passage of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, and to threaten retaliatory strikes.
Israel's military continues to occupy a large part of the south of Lebanon, where it has destroyed villages in recent days. Without a commitment to a temporary ceasefire at least, it is not clear how productive talks could proceed between the two sides.
It is also unclear how much sway the Lebanese government, with which the Israelis will be negotiating, will have over Hezbollah, which despite having representation in the Lebanese government is a separate entity backed by Iran.
The Lebanese government banned Hezbollah's military activities in early March, days after the start of war with Israel, but it has not stopped the group from carrying out military operations.
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On Thursday, Lebanon's cabinet instructed government security forces to restrict weapons in Beirut exclusively to state institutions.
"The army and security forces are requested to immediately begin reinforcing the full imposition of state authority over Beirut Governorate," Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said at the end of a cabinet meeting.
Netanyahu's office said Israel "appreciates today's call by the Prime Minister of Lebanon to demilitarise Beirut".
It said negotiations between the two countries would focus on "disarming Hezbollah and establishing peace relations between Israel and Lebanon".
According to US outlet Axios, Netanyahu's statement came after he held calls with US President Donald Trump and White House envoy Steve Witkoff, and that senior US officials had asked Netanyahu to "calm down" Israeli strikes and open negotiations.
The publication quoted a senior Israeli official who said the direct negotiations will begin next week in Washington.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun earlier said that a ceasefire was "the only solution" to the situation in Lebanon.
Aoun had called for direct negotiations with Israel a month ago as part of a proposal to end the escalating conflict with Hezbollah, while sharply criticising the Iran-backed group.
The latest escalation in the decades-long conflict between Hezbollah and Israel erupted when the group fired rockets into Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the opening stages of the war, and in response to the near-daily Israeli attacks on Lebanon that have continued despite a ceasefire agreed in November 2024.
More than 1,800 people have been killed, including at least 130 children, so far as a result of the war, the Lebanese health ministry says, without distinguishing combatants from civilians.
Israel says it has killed around 1,100 Hezbollah fighters.
More than 1.2 million people have been displaced, or one in five of the population, most of them from Shia Muslim communities.
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