PM: Rubio backs IDF keeping buffer; Lebanon said to object

PM: Iran, Hezbollah to have ‘no role in Lebanon’ under deal, Israel can maintain security zone

At press conference, Netanyahu claims framework accord with Lebanon opens door to peace but lets IDF address threats, also says Israel sending delegation to DC to discuss Iran deal

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Friday’s framework agreement between Israel and Lebanon a “historic achievement for Israel” that opens the door to an eventual “peace agreement between the two nations” while still allowing the Israel Defense Forces to remain across the border and combat threats from Hezbollah.

Netanyahu made the remarks in a wide-ranging press conference on Saturday night, in which he also discussed the upcoming election as well as the recently signed memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran, which kicked off 60 days of talks between those countries to permanently end the US-Israeli war with the Islamic Republic.

Israel is not a party to those talks, and the terms of the MOU have sparked profound concern in Israel because they mandate a ceasefire in Lebanon and free up money for Iran without it agreeing to defined concessions on its nuclear program. Netanyahu said Israel was sending a delegation to Washington, DC, to discuss the MOU, and claimed that the war created the conditions for the Iranian regime to fall.

The framework agreement with Lebanon, reached Friday in US-backed talks in Washington, includes a pilot effort in which Lebanese soldiers take control of some small areas currently held by Israeli troops, and includes a process aimed at disarming the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group. Hezbollah has rejected the agreement.

At the press conference, Netanyahu called the deal “a major blow” to Iran and to Hezbollah. Contrary to Iranian demands that Israel withdraw from south Lebanon, the prime minister said the framework accord allows the IDF to maintain its buffer zone there for as long as it needs.

“We’ll continue to hold it until Hezbollah and other terror groups are disarmed,” he said, “until there is no longer a threat to Israel from Lebanon.”

With the accord, he claimed, Israel, Lebanon and the US “are essentially telling Iran, ‘This is none of your business. You have no status here, no involvement and no role. Not you, not Hezbollah, not any terror group.'”

On Saturday night, however, the Lebanese president’s office appeared to undercut Netanyahu’s statement, saying that Lebanese President Joseph Aoun told US President Donald Trump he is committed to implementing the agreement but hopes the US will pressure Israel to withdraw from the south.

Netanyahu, in the press conference, acknowledged that Israel would be withdrawing from two small areas it currently holds, in a pilot project for disarming Hezbollah and transferring the territory to the Lebanese Armed Forces. Showing the areas on a map, he said one is completely outside the security zone, and the other is on the edge of the zone in an area the IDF no longer needs to retain.

Thus, he explained, Israel is retaining the entire security zone area that it needs to protect northern Israel.

He reiterated at another point that he was “standing firm” on maintaining the security zone and that he had spoken several times recently with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who he said “has effectively given the United States’ backing to this concept of a security zone that prevents Iran and Hezbollah from attacking us.”

In addition, Netanyahu said, Israel retains the freedom of action “to thwart any threats to IDF soldiers” in Lebanon, including what are defined as “emerging” threats. He said he met with Defense Minister Israel Katz and IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir to ensure that that provision would be emphasized as a priority.

“Our freedom of action is the freedom to thwart any threats to IDF soldiers. That is a clear directive [to IDF soldiers]. I have said it and repeated it: If you see a threat, act. Not only do you have the right to act — you have an obligation to act against an immediate threat,” the premier said.

He said 200 Hezbollah terrorists had been killed over the past two weeks due to such directives, including in incidents where there was not “an immediate threat in the sense of something right next to you,” but where soldiers identified emerging threats, such as when a group of troops “spotted seven [Hezbollah] terrorists entering a building.”

Netanyahu has reiterated that soldiers are free to respond to both immediate and emerging threats in recent days, in light of the Iran MOU declaring a ceasefire in Lebanon.

Not everyone in Israel is pleased about the framework agreement with Lebanon, despite Netanyahu’s praise for it.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir demanded that Netanyahu bring the deal to the cabinet for a vote, calling it a “major mistake.”

“While we will remain in most of the territory [of the buffer zone] for the moment, the government of Lebanon won’t disarm Hezbollah,” Ben Gvir, who heads the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, said in a statement on Saturday night. “Only IDF soldiers will destroy Hezbollah; no one else will do it for us.”

PM says he’s sending delegation to DC to discuss Iran deal

Netanyahu added that he intends to send a delegation to Washington to clarify Israel’s security interests regarding the nuclear provisions of any US-Iran deal. Negotiations over such a deal began earlier this month following the signing of the MOU, though exchanges of fire between the countries on Saturday appeared to imperil the talks.

“We said from the outset that we were not a party to the agreement between the United States and Iran. But that does not mean we do not have interests,” Netanyahu said during the press conference.

“We have interests, and we will make them known. Incidentally, even on the central issue — the nuclear issue — I intend to send a delegation to Washington to clarify what Israel’s interests are,” he said, without elaborating on the timing of the delegation’s departure, which officials will take part, or whom they will meet. 

At the end of the press conference, Netanyahu touted Israel’s military achievements against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and in Iran.

Repeating a claim he made last week, Netanyahu said that Israel “created conditions” for regime change in Iran through the US-Israeli campaign there, saying the current circumstances “will ultimately enable the Iranian people to do what I believe will happen: bring down this regime.”

“That will not happen in a single day. There are demonstrations in Iran today — today,” he said.

It was not clear, however, what he was referring to. There have not been recent reports of major, organized mass demonstrations inside Iran, though there are reports of some localized protests against the government, primarily by university students protesting wartime education policies.

In Gaza, Netanyahu said the IDF “dismantled most of Hamas’s military capabilities,” adding that the assassination of Hamas leader Izz al-Din al-Haddad several weeks ago drew “not even a single bullet, not a bullet, not a missile,” in response.

“True, their civilian capabilities remain, and we still have work to do,” he said of the Gazan terror group, “but it is an enormous achievement.”

It wass unclear exactly what the premier meant by “civilian capabilities,” though Hamas controls almost half of the Strip and most of its population. Its gunmen still patrol the streets of Gaza’s cities and it has refused to agree to any disarmament plan that would see it give up its remaining arsenal.

Jacob Magid and Reuters contributed to this report.