Aoun to ask Trump to pressure Israel on troop withdrawal
BEIRUT — Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must recognize that military force will not achieve security, and he expressed hope that this week’s talks in Rome will produce concrete steps toward ending the war and deploying the Lebanese Army in southern Lebanon.
“The Israeli Prime Minister must realize that war will not achieve security and that any stability can only be attained through understanding and consensus,” Aoun said in an official statement released during meetings with local and foreign delegations, including the Elders group founded by Nelson Mandela.
Aoun warned that continuing the war will lead to more killing, destruction and displacement, and argued that Israel destroyed Gaza and launched several wars against Lebanon without achieving its objectives. “Israel must change its approach if it truly seeks to ensure security and peace for its people and stability for the region,” he said.
The president said he will ask Trump, with whom he is scheduled to meet July 21 in Washington, to exert “the necessary pressure” on Israel to implement the U.S.-brokered framework agreement reached June 26 by Lebanese and Israeli negotiating teams. The preliminary accord provides for a phased Israeli withdrawal from occupied parts of southern Lebanon to allow the Lebanese Army to deploy and “restore effective sovereign authority,” beginning with two pilot zones.
A U.S. military team has held coordination meetings with the Lebanese Army over the past two days to discuss preparations for the first designated pilot zones, which include the towns of Froun, Ghandourieh, Zawtar al-Gharbieh and Zawtar al-Sharqieh in the central sector of southern Lebanon near the Litani River.
Aoun described the framework agreement as “the best available option” to end the war that began when Hezbollah opened a support front for Gaza on Oct. 8, 2023, and to ensure the withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied Lebanese territory.
The two-day negotiations in Rome, set to begin Tuesday, aim to build on the framework. Aoun said he hopes the talks will achieve “tangible and practical steps on the ground,” paving the way for the Israeli withdrawal and deployment of Lebanese troops.
Aoun took the politically risky decision to engage in direct negotiations with Israel in an attempt to end a devastating war that has exacted a staggering toll. Israel has reoccupied parts of southern Lebanon, reduced more than 70 villages to ruins and inflicted what the president described as an unprecedented human and material cost.
The Lebanese Health Ministry released a new casualty count Monday, showing 4,324 people killed and 12,221 wounded since March 2, when Hezbollah resumed fighting after 15 months of inactivity that followed the Nov. 27, 2024 cease-fire agreement.
The core of the framework deal is Hezbollah’s disarmament and the dismantling of its military infrastructure. Hezbollah, nurtured, armed and financed by Iran since its founding in the early 1980s, has described the direct negotiations as capitulation and insists on maintaining its armed resistance. The group has refused to disarm, a key Israeli condition for withdrawing from southern Lebanon.
Aoun’s engagement in the talks represents an attempt to distance Lebanon from Iran’s influence and its attempts to link Lebanon’s fate to its own negotiating track with the United States. Hezbollah’s fierce rejection of the direct talks has placed the Lebanese government under heavy pressure as it pursues a diplomatic end to the conflict.