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Israel is seeking the backing of the Trump administration to delay its military withdrawal from southern Lebanon, despite a ceasefire agreement stipulating all Israeli troops should leave by Sunday.
The request for a 30-day extension follows claims that Israel would like to keep up to five outposts in southern Lebanon.
Under the agreed ceasefire, which brought an end to the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israeli forces are supposed to have completed their withdrawal within 60 days, or by a 26 January deadline.
Reports in Israel, however, suggest Trump is reluctant to approve the delay.
Confirming Israel’s attempts to extend its occupation of southern Lebanon, the country’s ambassador to the US, Michael Herzog, told Israel’s Army Radio this week that it believed more time was required from the Lebanese army to deploy south of the Litani River, suggesting the deal was unchangeable.
“The agreement included a 60-day target for completing the IDF’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon and for the Lebanese army to take its place, but it isn’t set in stone and was phrased with some flexibility,” Herzog said.
“We are in discussions with the Trump administration to extend the time needed to enable the Lebanese Army to truly deploy and fulfil its role under the agreement. These discussions are ongoing.
Referring to UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, the Israeli government spokesperson, David Mencer, said: “There have been positive movements where the Lebanese army and Unifil have taken the place of Hezbollah forces, as stipulated in the agreement.
“We’ve also made clear that these movements have not been fast enough, and there is much more work to do,” he added, affirming that Israel wanted the agreement to continue.
Whether the Trump administration agrees to the request will be a key test of the president’s attitude towards Israel in his second term.
Israel’s reluctance to leave Lebanon comes at a fraught juncture in the first phase of the week-old fragile ceasefire in Gaza, with a large-scale Israeli operation under way in the occupied West Bank, and a profound lack of clarity over what Trump’s policies in the Middle East will look like.
Herzog’s public comments follow an earlier briefing by unnamed Israeli government sources to the national broadcaster Channel 13 suggesting the country is pushing to keep a military presence in Lebanon.
This week a Hezbollah MP warned that any failure to comply with the deadline would bring about the ceasefire’s collapse.
“We in Hezbollah are waiting for the date of January 26, the day on which the ceasefire requires a full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory,” Ali Fayyad said. “If the Israeli enemy does not comply with this, it will mean the collapse of the [ceasefire deal].”
Fayyad’s comments came as Hezbollah’s leader, Naim Qassem, accused Israel of hundreds of ceasefire violations. “We have been patient with the violations to give a chance to the Lebanese state responsible for this agreement, along with the international sponsors, but I call on you not to test our patience,” he said at the weekend.
Despite its recent rhetoric, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah suffered heavy losses of personnel and materiel during the conflict, which Israel said killed its longtime general secretary, Hassan Nasrallah.
The overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in Syria in December also closed a key Iranian weapons supply route for Hezbollah.
Full-scale conflict broke out in September, after almost a year of cross-border exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah, displacing tens of thousands of civilians on both sides.
Israeli forces are still operating in the buffer zone in neighbouring Syria, which Israeli forces entered after the fall of Assad despite international calls to pull back.
According to a report in Haaretz newspaper Israeli officials anticipated that the 26 January deadline was unlikely to hold, even before it signed the ceasefire agreement.
