BEIRUT, June 25 (Reuters) – Senior Israeli and Lebanese officials denied on Thursday that there had been any Israeli withdrawal from occupied southern Lebanon, \u200cafter a U.S. official said Israel had pulled some of its \u200ctroops back in a good faith gesture toward Lebanon’s government.<\/p>\n
Israel and Lebanon have been discussing a U.S.-backed \u200bproposal for Israeli forces to transfer some of the Lebanese territory invaded in their war with Hezbollah to Lebanon’s military, in a possible step toward restoring Lebanese control of occupied territory.<\/p>\n
The “pilot zone” proposal has been part of the latest round of \u200cIsraeli-Lebanese talks in Washington, which \u2060have gone on even as they appear to be eclipsed by Iran’s move to make Lebanon central to its own talks \u2060with the United States.<\/p>\n
A U.S. State Department official said the pilot zone process was aimed at ensuring the complete and verifiable destruction of Hezbollah’s weapons and infrastructure and \u200bthe dismantlement \u200bof non-state armed groups.<\/p>\n
“Israel has already taken \u200ba concrete step by pulling \u200cback from a part of its buffer zone. This is a significant demonstration of good faith toward Lebanon\u2019s legitimate government,” the State Department official said.<\/p>\n
“The (Lebanese Armed Forces) should now move in and verifiably clear out terrorist weapons and infrastructure. This model will be repeated across South Lebanon, enabling the safe return of displaced families, \u200creconstruction of the south, and the restoration \u200bof full Lebanese sovereignty,” the official added.<\/p>\n
A senior \u200bIsraeli defence official told Reuters that \u200bIsrael’s policy was clear and that the military would not \u200cbe withdrawing from its so-called “buffer zone” \u200bin southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n
Asked about \u200bthe State Department official’s comments, a senior Lebanese military official said developments on the ground in recent days “show the opposite of a pullback”.<\/p>\n
The official \u200bsaid Israeli forces had \u200cbeen enforcing their buffer zone against anyone approaching it, including Lebanese army \u200btroops.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Samia Nakhoul and Maya Gebeily in Beirut and Maayan \u200bLubell in Jerusalem; editing by Rami Ayyub)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEIRUT, June 25 (Reuters) – Senior Israeli and Lebanese officials denied on Thursday that there had been any…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[32],"tags":[422,37,2412,2425,1493,93,54011,54012,3435],"class_list":["post-176975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lebanon","tag-buffer-zone","tag-israel","tag-israeli","tag-israeli-forces","tag-lebanese-armed-forces","tag-lebanon","tag-occupied-southern-lebanon","tag-occupied-territory","tag-south-lebanon"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116810695409533013","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}