The News
US special envoy Amos Hochstein said the US will need to offer Lebanon an economic package to help the country get back on track after a ceasefire is achieved and avoid future conflict in the region
“What we have to do differently than before is not walk away when we get a ceasefire and let Iran or Hezbollah or other terrorist groups say ‘we will do the rebuilding,’” Hochstein told Semafor contributor Marcus Brauchli at the Semafor World Economy Summit in Washington DC .
“We have to come back with a large enough economic package, because when Lebanon is prosperous, that’s when Iran and its proxies are weak.”
Hochstein said that simply returning to the UN Resolution 1701, which helped end the previous Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006, is “not enough.”
“We have to get to a security arrangement and architecture between Israel and Lebanon that allows for this conflict not to be one of many future cycles as it has always been, but rather brings an end to it once and for all.”
Hochstein added that this would involve letting the “Lebanese Armed Forces actually be deployed in South Lebanon and to do its job. For that, it needs support from the international community.”
The Biden administration hopes that it will be able to strengthen the Lebanese military to fill the power vacuum that Israel’s decapitation of Hezbollah has created, The Washington Post reported.
Israel presented Hochstein with a list of demands to end the war in Lebanon last week, Axios reported, seeking to be allowed to conduct “active enforcement” in southern Lebanon to ensure Hezbollah does not rebuild military installations close to Israel.