Explainer-Israel and Lebanon Are Expected to Hold Talks. What Do We Know?

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

48% : More recently, Israel and Lebanon held U.S.-brokered talks in 2022 that led to a bilateral agreement establishing a maritime boundary between the two countries.
46% : Later on ⁠Thursday, Netanyahu announced Israel would begin negotiations with Lebanon.
45% : He said that the talks ⁠would aim to achieve two goals: disarming Hezbollah and securing a peace agreement between Israel and Lebanon. Netanyahu and other officials have not said whether they would be prepared to scale back ground operations or withdraw from positions in Lebanon, should talks advance.
42% : Following the 2024 deal, Israel continued to carry out strikes on what it said were Hezbollah depots and fighters.
42% : The official said Lebanon's position was that a ceasefire was a condition for further talks to reach a broader deal with Israel.
41% : HOW DID THE TALKS COME ABOUT? A week into the current war, Lebanon's President Joseph Aoun expressed willingness to begin direct negotiations with Israel to halt the fighting, even saying he was ready to move forward with normalizing relations.
40% : Israel has been bombing Lebanese villages as it seeks to create a "buffer zone" against Hezbollah past its northern border.
40% : Israel has a long history of military incursions and invasions in Lebanon, including an 18-year occupation in the south from 1982-2000 that began as an operation against Palestinian groups.
38% : Since then, Lebanon's government has ordered the army to establish a state monopoly on those arms, an effort Israel says has failed.
38% : A senior Israeli official said Israel would scale down attacks ahead of the talks.
36% : A different senior Israeli official, with knowledge of discussions in Netanyahu's cabinet, said Israel would urge Lebanon to sack Hezbollah ministers in the country's government.
34% : WHERE DOES ISRAEL STAND?
33% : Israel rebuffed that historic offer, deeming it too late from a government that shares its goal of disarming Hezbollah but cannot act against the group without risking a ⁠civil ⁠war. Israel's position changed after the U.S. and Iran ⁠reached a deal on Tuesday to halt fighting.
33% : With Iran insisting that Israel cease fire on Lebanon ahead of talks in Pakistan, Trump told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call on Thursday to lighten up attacks on Hezbollah, a source familiar with the matter said.
33% : Netanyahu said on Thursday Israel would not halt attacks on Hezbollah.
26% : HAVE THE TWO HELD TALKS BEFORE? Israel and Lebanon have no formal diplomatic relations and have technically been in a state of war since Israel's founding in 1948.
21% : WHO IS FIGHTING, AND WHY? Israel intensified its air attacks on Lebanon after Hezbollah fired missiles at Israel on March 2, three days into the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.