Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea has cautioned against reducing Lebanon's crisis solely to calls for a ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal, urging politicians to couple any demand for an Israeli withdrawal with Hezbollah's disarmament.

While acknowledging both as non-negotiable priorities, he argued that the core problem remains the existence of a statelet alongside the state that unilaterally dictates war and peace.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s advisor on Arab affairs, Massad Boulos, has said that “Iran wants Hezbollah to remain active in Lebanon.”

Israeli troops continue to detonate, demolish and burn southern villages they still occupy. On Wednesday, forces were bulldozing roads and buildings in Kfarshouba, burning homes in al-Qantara and detonating others in Tallousa, while artillery shelled Ali al-Taher, a strategic hill on the Israeli-declared Yellow Line.

The National News Agency said military vehicles made an incursion into the outskirts of Aita al-Jabal and reported overnight shelling and violent detonations in Nabatieh al-Fawqa, Zawtar al-Sharqiyeh, Kfartebnit, al-Mansouri and Majdalzoun, causing earth tremors felt in nearby villages.

President Joseph Aoun met Wednesday with Speaker Nabih Berri at the Baabda Palace, where they discussed “the general situation both locally and regionally, as well as the situation in southern Lebanon in light of the ongoing Israeli attacks on villages and towns, particularly the bombing and bulldozing of homes, and the need to halt these hostile practices,” the Presidency said.

As Lebanon's army deploys in the southern village of Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh, Hassan Sbeih is among those reassured by the troops and hoping the move will soon extend to areas still occupied by Israel.

Last week, the Lebanese military began deploying to the devastated village, one of the first "pilot zones" under a framework agreement reached between Israel and Lebanon in June.

U.N. peacekeepers have found around four tons of mainly ammonium nitrate explosives this month in a south Lebanon border village under Israeli occupation.

On July 2 during a "routine route check" near Houla, "peacekeepers found 385 containers abandoned inside a building, containing approximately 4,000 kilograms of explosive material, consisting mainly of ammonium nitrate compounds", the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said Tuesday in a statement.

Lebanese security forces have arrested a man accused of transferring nearly half a million dollars to the Islamic State group in neighboring Syria, a judicial official told AFP on Tuesday.

Forces "arrested a man who had stolen $400,000 from his father's safe, and investigations showed that he had transferred the money to Syria" for IS, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Investigators have found what appears to be a claim of responsibility by the suspect in the fatal attack near Berlin's Pride festival, German authorities said Tuesday.

The 21-year-old suspect, Abdul Rahman Ballout, was killed in a confrontation with police on Sunday, the day after investigators say he drove a van into a crowd near the festival's closing party before apparently cutting others with a machete. A Polish woman was killed and 31 other people injured.

The man on trial in the stabbing of Salman Rushdie chose Tuesday not to testify or call any witnesses in the federal terrorism case, which is expected to head to the jury as soon as Wednesday.

Hadi Matar's lawyer told the court that the 28-year-old — who already has been convicted of state-level attempted murder charges — wouldn't take the stand at his trial on charges that include engaging in an act of transnational terrorism.

Mahasen Faqih and her husband returned this week to their village in southern Lebanon, digging through the debris of their home in search of their belongings, as part of the U.S.-brokered "pilot zones" agreement in which Israel agreed to withdraw in exchange for the disarmament of Hezbollah.

The couple fled north shortly after the start of the latest Israel-Hezbollah war, in early March. Now, their home in Zawtar al-Gharbieh — one of three zones where Israel agreed to turn over control to the Lebanese army — is among homes so damaged that they're unlivable. But Faqih said they've vowed to stay, settling inside the large grocery shop that they own in the village as they wait to have their home demolished and rebuilt.