The fifth round of direct negotiations between Israel and Lebanon opened in Washington on 23 June under US mediation, but the talks are unfolding alongside a parallel diplomatic track that has introduced competing priorities. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz declared on Wednesday that Israel “will not withdraw from southern Lebanon” even if Washington requests it, and that some 200,000 displaced Lebanese residents would not be permitted to return to areas now under Israeli military control. The statement came as US officials confirmed the creation of a new “deconfliction mechanism” for Lebanon, announced after US-Iran talks in Switzerland, which includes Iran, Qatar and Pakistan but pointedly excludes Israel.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun told a British parliamentary delegation that the Washington negotiations are “separate from what emerged from the Switzerland meetings” and that work is under way to consolidate the ceasefire, leading to an Israeli withdrawal, Lebanese army deployment and the return of residents. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Beirut went to the talks because they were “the least costly path” and that Lebanon would not accept any residual Israeli occupation. Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem, however, rejected the diplomatic track and insisted Israel “has no choice but to fully withdraw from all Lebanese territory, without retaining an inch.” Iranian officials have repeatedly tied the Lebanon ceasefire to the broader US-Iran memorandum of understanding, with parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf stating that a truce in Lebanon is as important to Tehran as a truce in Iran itself. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking from the UAE, countered that Lebanon is a sovereign country and that Washington would “negotiate directly with the Lebanese government,” while acknowledging that Iran’s support for Hezbollah would be addressed in separate US-Iran discussions.

The competing frameworks have produced a US-backed “pilot” proposal under which Israeli forces would hand over some occupied territory to the Lebanese army, with Lebanese troops undergoing US vetting to ensure no links to Hezbollah. Israeli officials say Israel would retain a military presence in a buffer zone along the border. A senior Lebanese security official confirmed that military-to-military discussions on the pilot zones were scheduled for Wednesday, with a timeline for withdrawal expected only after the talks conclude on Thursday. The proposal faces rejection from Hezbollah, and Israeli media report that field commanders describe a gap between political declarations of “full freedom of action” and operational constraints imposed by the evolving US-Iran understandings.

The war, which erupted on 2 March when Hezbollah opened fire in solidarity with Iran after the US-Israeli strikes on Tehran, has killed more than 4,100 people in Lebanon and displaced a fifth of the population. A fragile ceasefire has largely held since Sunday, but Israeli forces remain deep inside southern Lebanon. The Washington talks are the highest-level direct contact between the two countries in decades, yet they are now entangled with a separate US-Iran process that, according to Western diplomatic sources, risks legitimising Iran’s role in Lebanese security affairs while sidelining Israel. The round is due to end on Thursday, with the pilot-zone discussions seen as a test of whether the Lebanese state can assert authority over areas vacated by Israel, but the fundamental divergence over an unconditional Israeli withdrawal remains unresolved.