Hezbollah ups the tempo

Hezbollah and Israel traded heavier fire on April 11 as Israel said it would not discuss a ceasefire with the group at Washington talks this week. (aljazeera.com) Lebanon’s Health Ministry said Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon killed at least 10 people on Saturday, including three emergency workers, while state media reported raids on more than a dozen locations in the south. Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors had held late-night talks on April 10 to finalize a Tuesday meeting at the U.S. State Department. (aljazeera.com) Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, said the Washington meeting would begin formal negotiations with the Lebanese government, even though the two countries do not have diplomatic relations. He said Hezbollah would not be part of those talks. (aljazeera.com) The immediate dispute is over sequence: Lebanon’s leaders have pushed for a halt in fighting first, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel wants talks to start “as soon as possible” while military operations continue. Netanyahu has also said disarming Hezbollah is a central Israeli goal. (aljazeera.com) That has turned the coming Washington meeting into something more than a border-security session. The talks are unfolding as Israel’s campaign in Lebanon strains the separate United States-Iran ceasefire announced on April 8, with Iran insisting that attacks on Lebanon must stop as part of any broader de-escalation. (nytimes.com) (aljazeera.com) The pace of fighting changed sharply this week. Al Jazeera reported that Israel carried out 100 simultaneous attacks across Lebanon on April 8, killing at least 300 people and injuring 1,150, and Hezbollah continued firing missiles into Israel afterward. (aljazeera.com) The New York Times reported on April 12 that Israeli officials described the campaign as part of an effort to weaken Hezbollah before the rare direct talks in Washington. The paper said the Israeli strikes had become a source of tension inside the U.S.-Iran ceasefire. (nytimes.com) Hezbollah and its allies reject the diplomatic track Israel is proposing. Hezbollah-affiliated lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah said direct negotiations with Israel would violate Lebanon’s political order, while Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said on April 11 that he was postponing a planned U.S. trip to safeguard national unity and security. (aljazeera.com) The violence has also hit state forces and rescue crews, not only Hezbollah positions. The Associated Press reported that an Israeli strike killed 13 Lebanese security personnel on April 11, underscoring how far the fighting has spread ahead of the Washington meeting. (apnews.com) So the talks set for Tuesday in Washington are beginning under fire, with Israel pressing for negotiations without a truce and Hezbollah showing it can still raise the cost on the ground. (aljazeera.com) (nytimes.com)