Spotlight
President Joseph Aoun, Speaker Nabih Berri and PM Nawaf Salam have received an Israeli message through Qatar asking that Lebanon hold political negotiations with Israel instead of holding indirect negotiations through military officers, An-Nahar newspaper reported on Friday.

Lebanese authorities warned Hamas Friday that it would face the "harshest measures" if it carried out any attacks from Lebanon.
The warning by the Higher Defense Council, Lebanon's top military body, came weeks after several Lebanese and Palestinians were detained on suspicion of firing rockets from Lebanon into northern Israel.

Lebanon's health ministry said two people were killed in Israeli strikes in the south of the country on Thursday, despite a fragile ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel.

The United Arab Emirates will lift a ban on its citizens traveling to Lebanon that was imposed during a diplomatic row in 2021, according to a joint statement on Thursday.

The Lebanese Army has dismantled "over 90 percent" of Hezbollah's infrastructure near the border with Israel since a November ceasefire, a security official said.
"We have dismantled over 90 percent of the infrastructure in the area south of the Litani," the official, who requested anonymity as the matter is sensitive, told AFP.

Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblat has urged members of the minority community in Syria to reject "Israeli interference" following Israeli threats against Damascus authorities if they harm the Druze.
"Preserving the (Druze) brothers (in Syria) involves rejecting Israeli interference," Jumblat said following a meeting with Druze figures in Beirut to discuss sectarian violence that erupted in Syria this week.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri held talks Wednesday in Ain el-Tineh with the new head of the ceasefire monitoring committee, U.S. major general Michael Leeney, who was accompanied by the committee’s outgoing head Major General Jasper Jeffers.

President Joseph Aoun has stressed that “the decision of removing arms will be implemented across Lebanon but the priority is for the South.”

Major General Jasper Jeffers, Chairman of the Cessation of Hostilities Implementation Mechanism, met Wednesday with Lebanese and UNIFIL leadership in Beirut, accompanied by Major General Michael Leeney.
“Major General Leeney is joining the Mechanism to provide a full-time senior U.S. military leader in Beirut to continue the strong relationship between the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and U.S. military,” the U.S. Embassy said in a statement.

As informed sources said that there are no motives behind the replacement of the head of the ceasefire committee Maj. Gen. Jasper Jeffers, other sources told Al-Akhbar newspaper that “a lot of criticism inside and outside Lebanon targeted Jeffers’ performance, especially from the French side and the UNIFIL forces, due to his bad role in managing the committee and his obstruction of its work many times.”
