US President Donald Trump said Israel and Lebanon have agreed to extend the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire by three weeks following talks at the White House on Thursday, averting an expiry of the initial truce that had been due on Monday.
The announcement came after a second high-level meeting between Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter and Lebanese Ambassador Nada Hamadeh Moawad, the highest contact between the two governments in decades. The initial 10-day ceasefire took effect on April 16 following direct Washington talks between PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun.
“The United States is going to work with Lebanon in order to help it protect itself from Hezbollah,” Trump wrote on social media. He said he was looking forward to meeting Netanyahu and Aoun “in the near future”. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and US ambassadors to Beirut and Tel Aviv attended the White House session.
Aoun’s office said Lebanon is pressing for a full halt to Israeli strikes, the withdrawal of Israeli troops, the release of Lebanese prisoners, the deployment of Lebanese forces along the border, and the start of reconstruction. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Hezbollah was the “sole obstacle to peace” and called on Beirut to disarm the group.
Hezbollah has rejected the Washington track. Senior political council member Wafiq Safa told the Associated Press the group will not abide by any agreement reached in direct talks.
During the ceasefire period, Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil was killed in an Israeli strike while covering southern Lebanon; Lebanese officials said an ambulance responding to the scene was also fired upon. Israel denied deliberately targeting journalists. Lebanon’s cabinet has discussed joining the International Criminal Court following the incident.
At a follow-up White House news conference, Trump added a specific new condition tied to any future Iran peace deal: Tehran would have to cut its payment flows to Hezbollah. Responding to a reporter’s question, the president said the regime “would have to cut” those financial ties as part of terms. Trump said Netanyahu and Aoun could meet at the White House “within the next three weeks” and said there was a “great chance” of a lasting Lebanon-Israel peace deal being struck next year. “I think it should be an easy peace relative to some of the things we’re working on,” he said, according to Sky News wire copy carried locally.
The current war, which began on March 2, has killed about 2,300 people in Lebanon and displaced more than one million.
