US, Israel and Lebanon do not support French paper

The U.S., Israel and Lebanon do not support a French proposal for a truce between Hezbollah and Israel, prominent sources said.

The sources told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, in remarks published Monday, that Israel prefers that U.S. special envoy Amos Hochstein continue his mediation.

The Lebanese government also refused to discuss the French paper, the sources said.

Diplomats from the United States and European countries have presented a series of proposals in hopes of producing a deal that would tamp down the border conflict.

The ideas mostly hinge on a Hezbollah pullback a few kilometers from the border, a beefed-up Lebanese army presence in the border region, and negotiations over border points that Israel has been occupying since withdrawing its forces from the rest of southern Lebanon in 2000.

Eventually, the plans could lead into a demarcation of the land border between Lebanon and Israel, following the maritime border deal reached in 2022.

The most recent of these proposals, put forward by France, would involve Hezbollah withdrawing its forces 10 kilometers from the border, said a Lebanese government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the negotiations.