Israel says its campaign is targeted at Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group and political party. Lebanon’s health ministry says around 250 women, 165 children, and 87 health workers are among the victims of Israeli bombing.
Read more: Israel's War Against Lebanon, Explained
Experts tell TIME that Hezbollah’s disarmament will likely also be top of mind for Lebanese officials, as well as seeking a guarantee of Lebanese sovereignty following Israel’s invasion of the country to create a so-called “buffer zone” along the border.
Israel’s invasion and ongoing attacks have become a point of contention in the fragile two-week cease-fire between the U.S. and Iran, the latter of which demanded that Lebanon be included in the cease-fire before Iranian and American officials begin their own peace talks.
The condition Netanyahu indicated as Israel’s top priority—disarming Hezbollah—could prove to be a complicated hurdle in talks between Israel and Lebanon, experts tell TIME.
Israel continued bombing Lebanon “almost daily” since that agreement was reached, according to United Nations Special Rapporteurs, and Israel has accused Lebanon of not upholding its part of the deal by ensuring that Hezbollah withdrew from the border and allowing the Lebanese army to take over.
But Ghaddar says that Hezbollah will never agree to disarm, as the group itself has pledged in the past. That, she explains, is ”something that is linked to their ideology, their existence.”
“Israel's at war with Hezbollah, and is negotiating with Lebanon. And there's a problem there,” says Daniel Byman, who served as a senior advisor to the State Department and is director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Another factor is the extent to which Israel would work with Lebanon to achieve Hezbollah’s disarmament.
Shapiro describes Israel’s involvement as a “balance to be struck,” where “if it's too public, if it's too kinetic, it will actually cause more Lebanese to reject the cooperation necessary to carry it out.” He notes that Israel already provides intelligence to the Lebanese army in order to target Hezbollah strongholds.
Lebanese sovereignty
The other major sticking point in negotiations between Israel and Lebanon is the country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.
Hezbollah entered the war with Iran on March 2 when it responded to the killing of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei by attacking Israel, which responded with a ground invasion on its southern border to create a “buffer zone” on the land leading to the Litani River, roughly 19 miles from the shared border.
Byman adds that with Israel’s buffer zone, the logic is that “Israeli towns and cities along the border will be out of the range of short-range Hezbollah weapons … But from a Lebanese point of view, Israel is now taking over part of your country.”
How could Israel-Lebanon talks affect U.S.-Iran talks?
“It is improbable to me to think that those negotiations in Lebanon and Israel will pay off without an agreement between Iran and the U.S.,” he says.
On Friday, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, Iran’s Parliament speaker, said negotiations would not take place with the U.S. without a cease-fire in Lebanon. The U.S. has denied Iran’s claims that its ceasefire included Lebanon.
“Israel's insistence on continuing its operations against Hezbollah is placing the U.S.-Iran track and the broader cease-fire as a whole in jeopardy,” he tells TIME. “It's very clear that Iran is treating the two as tightly connected.”
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