By Laila Bassam, Timour Azhari and Emily Rose
BEIRUT (Reuters) -Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told U.S. envoys on Thursday that Israel’s ability to counter threats to its security from Lebanon and return displaced people to the north were key elements of any ceasefire deal with Lebanon.
He was speaking shortly after a Hezbollah attack on northern Israel’s Metula killed five people including an Israeli farmer and four foreign workers, while two more civilians were killed from shrapnel near the town of Kiryat Ata, Israeli authorities said.
Meanwhile, Beirut said a series of Israeli strikes had killed six health workers in southern Lebanon.
“The main issue is not the paperwork of this or that agreement, but Israel’s ability and determination to enforce the agreement and thwart any threat to its security from Lebanon,” Netanyahu’s office cited him as telling the two U.S. envoys.
Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein were in Israel on a new push to secure ceasefires in both Lebanon and Gaza.
Sources previously told Reuters that talks were centred on a 60-day pause to allow for the implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which would entail Hezbollah withdrawing its armed presence from south of the Litani River.
The diplomatic push comes amid intensifying fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which has run in parallel to Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas militants that has left the tiny enclave in ruins and has caused a humanitarian crisis.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister accused Israel of perpetrating a form of “genocide” with its grinding assault on northern Gaza – a charge it denies – and called on Lebanon to solve its long-running political crisis.
BOMBARDMENT
Israel bombarded areas around the eastern city of Baalbek on Thursday for a second consecutive day after issuing evacuation notices.
On Wednesday it had conducted heavy airstrikes targeting Hezbollah in and around the city, which is famed for its Roman temples.
Dozens of cars could be seen speeding out of the area after Thursday’s warning, with wafts of black smoke still visible emanating from the town of Douris, where an Israeli strike the previous day destroyed Hezbollah fuel stocks, according to the Israeli military and a Lebanese security source.
Thousands fleeing the violence have sought shelter in the nearby Christian-majority town of Deir al-Ahmar, where local official Jean Fakhry said authorities were struggling to cover even a fraction of their needs and some people had to spend the night in their cars.
“We cannot continue this way,” Fakhry said.
The killing of six Lebanese health workers and wounding of four others in three separate strikes across south Lebanon on Thursday brought the total toll of health workers killed and wounded in over a year of Israeli strikes to 178 and 279 respectively, the Lebanese health ministry said.
Hezbollah said it had launched several rocket and artillery attacks against Israeli forces near the southern town of Khiyam.It marked the fourth straight day of fighting in and around the strategic hilltop town, which is home to one of the largest Shi’ite communities in southern Lebanon.
The mayor of the Lebanese border town of Wazzani, south of Khiyam, said he had pleaded with authorities to evacuate more than 20 people, most of them women and children, who were stuck in the crossfire of fighting but Lebanese authorities said Israel had not responded to his appeal.
“We keep asking for them to be helped but it’s like we’re in a jungle. No one listens,” Mayor Ahmed Mohammed told Reuters.
Hezbollah aims to keep Israeli forces out of Khiyam to prevent them detonating homes and buildings, as has happened on a large scale in other border towns, a source familiar with the group’s thinking told Reuters.
Hezbollah says its fighters have prevented Israel from fully occupying or controlling any southern villages, while Israel says it is carrying out limited ground operations aimed at destroying the group’s infrastructure.
(Reporting by Laila Bassam, Timour Azhari and Maya Gebeily in Beirut and Emily Rose in Jerusalem; Writing by Timour Azhari; Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Gareth Jones)
