The Israeli prime minister told senior Biden administration officials on Thursday that the main points of any ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah should provide Israel with the ability to counter security threats from Lebanon and return Israeli citizens to communities in the country’s north.

Focusing on the Middle East, senior White House officials Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem to work to advance a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah that would halt escalating conflict in the region.

Netanyahu’s remarks came as rockets fired by Hezbollah reportedly killed at least seven people and injured others. At least 6 healthcare workers lost their lives in Israeli attacks in Lebanon. Reuters reported.

The Biden administration is trying to broker a separate ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah to calm conflicts on multiple fronts in the Middle East; There has been little movement towards a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The USA also warned Iran to step back. In response to Israel’s retaliatory strike against the country last week.

I can say that Iran knows this message very clearly; They should not continue to escalate this conflict in any way. “This has to be the end of it,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Wednesday.

However, expectations for reaching an agreement are low. McGurk and Hochstein’s visit to Israel follows Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to the region last week, following Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attack on Israel that triggered the war in the Gaza Strip; This visit was his 11th in a year. and Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel from southern Lebanon starting on October 8.

“I don’t want to bet on what the chances are of a deal being reached,” Miller said.

“I would say we are focused on finding a diplomatic solution,” he added.

Still, Hezbollah has signaled it is open to a ceasefire, and the stance comes as the group’s leadership has suffered heavy losses, including Israel’s assassination of its leader of more than three decades, Hassan Nasrallah, in September and an attack on Iran last week. It demonstrated Israel’s ability to operate with impunity in the skies over Iran. Iran is a major financial, military and political supporter of Hezbollah.

Hezbollah’s newly appointed secretary general, Naim Kasim, said in a major speech that Hezbollah would accept “appropriate” ceasefire conditions but insisted that “the basis of any negotiation is a ceasefire first.” According to an analysis By the Institute for the Study of War.

The Biden administration says the basis for any ceasefire agreement is to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which requires the demilitarization of a large swath of southern Lebanon up to the Litani River.

Implementation of the decision is the responsibility of the United Nations peacekeeping force, which Israel has criticized as completely ineffective given the enormous military infrastructure that Hezbollah has managed to develop, including solid and deep tunnels, in the so-called demilitarized zone. , bedrock.

But Netanyahu’s remarks calling for Israel’s “ability and determination to implement the agreement and thwart any threat to its security from Lebanon” cast doubt on international monitors and sanctions and could pose an obstacle to the Lebanese government or Hezbollah reaching a deal.

“The focus of current discussions is on creating better monitoring mechanisms, stemming the flow of arms to Lebanon, and building a stronger Lebanese Armed Forces,” said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Bowman met with senior US and Israeli officials on this issue.

“If past is a beginning, you can have the best monitoring mechanisms in the world, but it doesn’t matter if the monitoring force lacks the will or ability to act against terrorist activities it detects or discovers. Seeing is one thing. Doing is different. “We need both to prevent more of the same events from happening in the future.”

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