By Laila Bassam, Steven Scheer and Jana Choukeir
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM, April 13 (Reuters) – The Israeli army launched an offensive to capture a key town in southern Lebanon from Hezbollah fighters hiding inside on Monday, putting pressure on the Iran-backed group ahead of historic nL1N40T0XP talks between Israeli and Lebanese government envoys.
With the Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors to the United States set to meet Tuesday in Washington, Lebanon’s foreign minister said Beirut would use direct talks to push for a ceasefire in a war that is complicating broader diplomacy aimed at preventing conflict in the Middle East nL6N40V09S.
But prospects for the meeting – a rare face-to-face meeting between countries officially at war – have dimmed, with Israel saying it will not discuss a ceasefire while Hezbollah opposes talks with Israel, reflecting worsening political tensions in Lebanon.
On the ground in southern Lebanon, the Israeli army has completed the siege of the town of Bint Jbeil just across the border and has begun a ground offensive there, an Israeli military spokesman and Lebanese security sources said.
Lebanese sources said the Hezbollah fighters holed up inside were ready to fight to the death, citing the strategic and symbolic significance of Bint Jbeil, a Hezbollah stronghold, the provincial capital and gateway to surrounding villages.
ISRAEL SEEK TO SECURE BORDER STRIP
An Israeli military official said full operational control over Bint Jbeil would be achieved in the next few days and that only a small number of rebels would remain in the area.
On Sunday, Hezbollah said it attacked Israeli forces in and around Bint Jbeil with rockets, artillery and suicide drones.
A foreign security official based in Lebanon said seizing Bint Jbeil would give Israel better control of the entire southeastern Lebanese border strip, leaving behind the western part of the border area, which is largely forested and more difficult to clear.
Hezbollah opened fire on Israel in support of Tehran on March 2, triggering an Israeli offensive that Lebanese authorities say killed more than 2,000 people and forced more than 1 million to flee their homes.
Israel has said it intends to occupy southern Lebanon as far as the Litani River, where it meets the Mediterranean, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Israeli border.
RESISTANCE SHI’ITE GROUPS SPEAK WHILE PEOPLE ARE ‘KILLED’
Israel and the United States have said the operation against Hezbollah is not part of the fragile ceasefire agreement between Iran and the United States, although Pakistan’s prime minister, a key broker, has said the truce would include Lebanon.
While fighting in Lebanon has not stopped, Israel has not launched an airstrike on Beirut since Wednesday, when it hit the capital in a ferocious attack that killed hundreds across the country.
US Ambassador to Lebanon, Michel Issa, will host a meeting in Washington on Tuesday between Israeli ambassador Yechiel Leiter and his Lebanese counterpart Nada Hamadeh Moawad.
Lebanese culture minister Ghassan Salameh, speaking in an interview with Lebanese television station Al Jadeed on Sunday, said finding a ceasefire is the only substantive issue that Moawad is allowed to discuss.
The Israeli Embassy in Washington said last week the talks would be the start of “formal peace talks” and that “Israel has refused to discuss a ceasefire with Hezbollah.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Youssef Raggi, a member of the staunchly anti-Hezbollah Lebanese Forces party, said Lebanon was trying to reach a ceasefire through direct negotiations.
In a phone call with German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, Raggi said “the establishment of this track has effectively established a separation between the Lebanese file and the Iranian track,” Raggi posted on X.
A senior Lebanese political source said the talks were taking place without any national consensus because both Hezbollah and its Shi’ite Muslim ally, National Assembly Speaker Nabih Berri, opposed pre-ceasefire talks. Another source familiar with their views said Lebanon should not sit at the same table with Israel while “our people are being killed”.
(Additional reporting by Maya Gebeily in Beirut and Rami Ayyub in Jerusalem; Writing by Tom Perry, Editing by William Maclean)