JERUSALEM, Israel – While President Trump is in China, Israel and Lebanon are due to meet in Washington beginning on Thursday. Their ceasefire is due to expire. In Gaza, Israel may have to disarm Hamas on its own, and in Jerusalem, Israelis celebrated the anniversary of Jerusalem’s reunification.
The talks between Israel and Lebanon will resume at the State Department.
Both delegations are headed by their top diplomats in the U.S., and for the first time, will include military representatives. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michael Issa, and Michael Needham, advisor to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, will represent the United States.
The meeting comes against the backdrop of continued Hezbollah drone strikes against Israeli troops and Israel’s continued strikes against Hezbollah weapons and terrorist infrastructure, mostly in southern Lebanon.
According to the Israel Defense Forces, since the beginning of the operation, Israeli soldiers have eliminated more than 400 terrorists and located more than 1,000 Hezbollah weapons.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is not producing the agreed-upon results, as Hamas has reportedly reasserted control in parts of the Gaza Strip.
During a visit to Jerusalem, Gaza Board of Peace Director-General Nikolai Mladenov stated, “In the areas that it still controls, Hamas is consolidating its grip on the population. It is taxing people in the street who have nothing left to give.”
Mladenov added that if the situation doesn’t change, there’s no prospect for a different future for Gazans.
“You can feed people, you can build them a house, you can probably build a road. But if you do not give them a prospect for the future, you have actually only improved a day. You have not changed anyone’s life,” he said.
Trump appointed Mladenov last year as the top diplomat overseeing the Gaza ceasefire deal.
“Seven months since the ceasefire, the door to the future of Gaza is still closed. It is not what the Palestinians were promised, and it is not what they deserve. And it is not giving Israel the security to move forward, as the Israeli people also want,” Mladenov noted.
He did say that Hamas can still stand as a political party. Still, he insisted, “What is not negotiable, however, is that armed factions or militias with their own military command and control systems, with their own arsenals or tunnel networks, can exist alongside the transitional Palestinian Authority. This is not a political demand. This is a requirement of the process.”
Separately, Ambassador Huckabee said earlier this week that Israel might need to disarm Hamas by itself. His remarks suggest frustration with the unresolved threat from the Iranian proxy, even as the U.S. and Israel are focused on the Iran war.
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In another sign of the strong ties between Israel and the U.S., rare ancient coins depicting the Temple Menorah were returned to Israel from the U.S., following a joint investigation into the theft of the antiquities.
And, at a Knesset conference this week, global parliamentarians pledged to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital ahead of the Jerusalem Day celebrations in the city.
The meeting included parliamentarians from the U.S., Japan, Australia, and nations across Europe and Africa, all committing to legislative efforts to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Ambassadors from Guatemala, Paraguay, Malawi, Argentina, Panama, and Fiji were also present.
Jerusalem Day officially begins at sundown on Thursday, marking the 59th anniversary of the city’s reunification under Israeli control in the 1967 Six-Day War. Thursday’s famous flag march through the city will follow the footsteps of IDF soldiers in 1967, through the Old City to the Western Wall.
