US wants end to Israel-Hezbollah war ‘as soon as possible’

AFP | Beirut, Lebanon                                     

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The United States said Monday it wants the Israel-Hezbollah war to end “as soon as possible”, as it pressed for the enforcement of a UN resolution that required the armed group to withdraw from south Lebanon.

US envoy Amos Hochstein held talks in Lebanon’s capital with parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally, in a push for an end to a nearly month-long war that has killed more than 1,470 people in Lebanon.

“Tying Lebanon’s future to other conflicts in the region was not and is not in the interest of the Lebanese people,” Hochstein said, referring to a key Hezbollah demand that any ceasefire in Lebanon be linked to an end to the war in Gaza.

Hochstein also said that while UN resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, should be the basis for a new ceasefire, the parties had not done enough to implement it since then.

Under resolution 1701, only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL should have been able to deploy in areas south of Lebanon’s Litani River near the Israeli border.

Despite the resolution’s provisions, Hezbollah remained in south Lebanon and in October last year began launching low-intensity cross-border strikes into Israel, in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas.

“The commitment that we have is to resolve this conflict based on 1701, that is what the solution is going to have to look like,” Hochstein told reporters. Resolution “1701 was successful at ending the war in 2006 but we must be honest that no one did anything to implement it,” he added, saying: “Both sides simply committing to 1701 is just not enough.”

Last week, Prime Minister Najib Mikati told AFP his government was ready to bolster the army’s presence in south Lebanon if there is a ceasefire.

It would start by recruiting an additional 1,500 troops into the army, and that as soon as any ceasefire is agreed it would mobilise soldiers from elsewhere in Lebanon, Mikati said.

Iran-backed Hezbollah was the only armed group that refused to disarm following the 1975-1990 civil war, and has maintained a formidable arsenal in a country wracked by political division and a weak military.

Strikes on south kill 4 rescuers Lebanon’s health ministry said yesterday four rescuers affiliated to Hezbollah or its ally Amal were killed in Israeli strikes “targeting rescue teams” in the country’s war-torn south in the past 24 hours.

“Israeli enemy strikes in the past 24 hours targeted rescue teams, leading to the following bloody toll,” the ministry said in a statement, listing one rescuer from a group affiliated with the Amal party and three Hezbollah-linked paramedics as having been killed in different locations.

UN condemns ‘extensive damage’, after strikes on Hezbollah-linked finance firm The United Nations condemned on Monday Israeli strikes the night before targeting a Hezbollah-linked firm that, it said, caused “extensive damage” to civilian property and infrastructure.

“We condemn the heavy Israeli bombardment of various urban and residential areas... which the IDF (Israeli military) says targeted various facilities affiliated with the Al-Qard Al-Hassan financial association,” the UN Human Rights Office in the Middle East and North Africa said in a statement.

The attacks caused “extensive damage to civilian objects,” it said, including “residential properties, civilian infrastructure, and business premises”.

The Rights Office added that the attacks also triggered “indescribable panic and another wave of displacement among residents of those areas”. “International humanitarian law must be always respected. Civilians and civilian infrastructure are not a target,” it said, calling for a ceasefire.