President Donald Trump said Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to stop shooting after he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reached Hezbollah through representatives, according to a post on Truth Social.
“All shooting will stop — that Israel will not attack them, and they will not attack Israel,” Trump wrote.
Trump said his call with Netanyahu was “very productive” and that his contact with Hezbollah, through what he described as “highly placed Representatives,” also went well.
He also said no Israeli troops would enter Beirut. Any forces already heading there, he added, had been turned back.
But a later statement from Netanyahu left the situation less clear. Netanyahu said he told Trump that if Hezbollah “does not stop firing at our cities and citizens,” Israel would strike Hezbollah targets in Beirut.
“This position of ours remain unchanged,” Netanyahu said in the statement, which also said the Israeli military would “continue to operate as planned in southern Lebanon.”
The announcement came after Netanyahu ordered strikes on Hezbollah targets in Beirut’s Dahiyeh district following rocket fire toward northern Israel, including near Haifa. Netanyahu said Hezbollah had repeatedly violated a U.S.-brokered truce in place since mid-April.
Iran had warned that the strikes crossed a line. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the ceasefire Washington reached with Tehran last week was not limited to Iranian soil and included Lebanon. He said the United States and Israel would be responsible for any consequences.
Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf went further, calling the strikes evidence that Washington was not honoring the agreement.
Earlier in the day, Israeli forces seized Beaufort Castle. Both sides have reported more than 3,000 Lebanese deaths since the fighting began, with roughly 1 million people displaced. Governments worldwide called for restraint.
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