Reaching a solution to end his war Israel and her Hezbollah in Lebanon is within “contact” distance, assured yesterday the special envoy of the American presidency, Amos Hoxtyn, in Beirut, where he went to negotiate an American proposal for a truce.

This proposal was presented last Thursday by the US ambassador to the Lebanese capital, Lisa Johnson, to Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Parliament Speaker Nabi Berri. It is a 13-point plan that calls for a 60-day ceasefire and the deployment of non-combatant Lebanese armed forces in southern Lebanon.

In his visit to Beirut yesterday, Mr Hoxtyn, Joe Biden’s special envoy, spoke of a “real opportunity to end this conflict”.

“It is these parties that must decide” the end of the hostilities, he said after Nabi Berri, who is considered an ally of Hezbollah, met with him and took it upon himself to conduct the negotiations. The deal is now very close, “it is within touching distance”, insisted Mr Hockstein, who also met Mr Mikati and General Joseph Aoun, chief of the general staff of the Lebanese armed forces.

“The situation is good in principle,” Mr Berri told the London-based Saudi newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, adding that Lebanese and US representatives still had to sort out “some technical details” after Mr Hockstein’s departure.

According to the head of the Lebanese national delegation, the American special envoy assured that he is “coordinating with the Israelis” regarding the draft agreement.

Amos Hockstein is expected in Israel for talks.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, warned last Monday night that his army will continue to “conduct operations” even if a cease-fire agreement is signed with Hezbollah, which the other side considers a priori unacceptable.

On the night of Tuesday into Wednesday, Hezbollah announced that it had fired guided missiles at Israeli troops as they tried to evacuate wounded in southern Lebanon, where Israeli ground operations are taking place, citing “dead”.

The Shiite movement, an ally of Iran, on October 8 opened a “front” against Israel to “support” Hamas, the day after the Palestinian Islamist movement’s unprecedented attack on southern sectors of Israeli territory, which triggered the war in the Strip of Gaza.

After almost a year of cross-fire on the border, the center of gravity of the war has shifted to Lebanon, where Israel has been launching massive aerial bombardments since September 23 and began ground operations on September 30.

According to figures from the Lebanese Ministry of Health, more than 3,540 people have been killed in Lebanon since October 8, 2023, the majority since September 23 – among them were more than 200 children, according to UNICEF.

The Lebanese army announced yesterday that three of its members were killed in an Israeli strike against its position in the southern part of Lebanese territory.

In the same area, on the Israeli side, the army announced the death of a soldier in battles with Hezbollahbringing to 49 the official tally of Israeli casualties since September 30. In total, in 13 months, 79 soldiers and 46 civilians have been killed.

The Israel says it aims to push Hezbollah dozens of kilometers from the border with Lebanon to allow the return of its 50,000 citizens who were forced to flee their homes in the face of its fire.

Tens of thousands of residents have also been displaced in southern Lebanon.

New Israeli shelling took place yesterday in the city of Tire and two other communities in the south, as well as two villages in the Bekaa Valley, according to the Lebanese national news agency ANI.

For its part, the Israeli army counted about 40 “missiles” launched from Lebanon against Israeli territory.

“There is no better solution at this stage than the implementation of Resolution 1701” of the UN Security Council (2006), French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecorny, on a tour of the Gulf, judged for his part.

The decision, following the end of a previous war between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006, stipulated that only the Lebanese army and the peacekeeping force should have forces deployed on the country’s southern border, implying that the militants would withdraw. of Hezbollah, but also the Israeli troops operating in Lebanese territory.

On the other hand, the Israeli army accused Hezbollah of hitting two positions of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon (FINUL) yesterday. In one of these strikes, according to FINUL, four Ghanaian blue-collar workers were injured.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission counted more than 30 cases in which facilities used by blue-collar workers were damaged or injured, the majority – 20 of them – due to Israeli fire or operations.

On the so-called southern front, in the Gaza Strip, Mr Netanyahu yesterday promised, in a video filmed on Palestinian territory, according to his services, a reward of five million dollars to “anyone who gives us a hostage”.

During the October 7 Hamas attack, which killed 1,206 people, most of them civilians – according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data, which includes hostages who either died in captivity or were already dead when were transferred to the Palestinian enclave – 251 people were kidnapped, of which 97 remain hostages in the Gaza Strip, however 34 of them have been declared dead by the Israeli army.

Large-scale Israeli military retaliatory operations have since claimed the lives of at least 43,972 people, mostly civilians, in the small Palestinian enclave, according to the latest figures from Hamas’s health ministry, which are deemed reliable by the United Nations. Almost the entire population of 2.4 million was forcibly displaced in the enclave, which has been plunged into humanitarian disaster.