Israel, Lebanon sign U.S.-mediated peace framework

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday hosted a signing ceremony at which both the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors to the United States agreed to a peace deal framework. The U.S. government would mediate the deal and help both sides work out further details, he said. He did not provide specifics of the framework.

Israeli ambassador Yechiel Leiter said the agreement would be based on performance, but didn’t provide further details. Israel previously agreed to withdraw from certain “pilot zones” in Lebanon once the Lebanese military had fully cleared the Hezbollah terror group from those zones.

Was Hezbollah a party to the agreement? Hezbollah did not participate in the deal. Israel invaded Lebanon in order to fight the terror group after it began launching attacks on northern Israel. However, Hezbollah is backed by Iran, and an Israel-Lebanon permanent ceasefire is one of Iran’s requirements for its own peace deal with the United States.

Dig deeper: Read my report on the status of U.S. negotiations with Iran.