Trump says Israel and Hezbollah have agreed to dial back fighting
A boy looks through a damaged room of the Jabal Amel Hospital into a destroyed building that was hit in an Israeli airstrike in the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Monday. (AP Photo)
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday that Israel and Hezbollah have agreed to dial back fighting after he talked with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and communicated with the Lebanese militant group through mediators.
Trump announced the development in a social media post following a call with Netanyahu, whose forces recently made their deepest incursion into Lebanon in more than a quarter century. Trump said there would be no Israeli troops “going to Beirut, and any Troops that are on their way, have already been turned back.”
The president said Hezbollah had “agreed that all shooting will stop — That Israel will not attack them, and they will not attack Israel.”
Netanyahu confirmed the conversation but cast it less as restraint and more as a warning, saying he told Trump that Israel would strike targets in Beirut if Hezbollah’s attacks do not stop. The Israeli military will continue “to operate as planned” in southern Lebanon, Netanyahu added.
There was no immediate word from Hezbollah.
The two sides have been under a ceasefire since mid-April, but the militant group resumed attacks after Israeli strikes in Lebanon that Israel characterized as self-defense. The fighting also presents a major obstacle in the emerging deal to extend the ceasefire in the Iran war. Tehran wants any agreement to include Lebanon.
Lebanese authorities secured Hezbollah’s approval of a proposal by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Israel would not strike Beirut’s southern suburbs, and Hezbollah would not attack northern Israel, according to a statement issued by the Lebanese Embassy to the U.S.






