"Hezbollah is the impediment" to Israel-Lebanon peace, says Rubio

Washington, DC [US], June 3 : US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has asserted that Israel and Lebanon remain capable of securing a peace treaty within a matter of days, pointing to the presence of Hezbollah as the sole barrier to an agreement, as delegations from both nations commenced a fourth round of diplomatic discussions in the American capital.
Testifying before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, the top American diplomat highlighted that the neighbouring states share no fundamental border disputes.
"Israel and Lebanon can do a peace deal tomorrow," Rubio told lawmakers.
He further observed: "Israel has no territorial claims in Lebanon. Hezbollah is the impediment. There is no Hezbollah without Iran."
Rubio explained that Washington, acting as the mediator between the two factions, is striving to ensure that the Israeli-Lebanese dialogue progresses entirely separately from any concurrent diplomatic tracks with Iran, a strategy that Tehran has firmly resisted.
The latest session of face-to-face negotiations got underway at the US State Department, assembling high-level diplomats from both countries even as active cross-border hostilities persist. These deliberate sessions are slated to stretch across two days.
Heading the respective diplomatic groups are Israel's ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, and Lebanon's representative to Washington, Nada Hamadeh Moawad. Daniel Holler, a senior adviser to Rubio, is also taking part in the sessions.
The envoys refrained from making any public statements as the current round of dialogue commenced.
The diplomatic engagement unfolds against a backdrop of uninterrupted military exchanges between Israeli troops and Hezbollah, coming just after US President Donald Trump announced on Monday that a consensus had been achieved to suspend the violence.
Israeli authorities stated that their military operations would continue to strike Hezbollah bases across the southern suburbs of Beirut should the Iran-aligned faction carry on with its rocket bombardments against communities in northern Israel.
The frontier has witnessed a dramatic surge in combat over recent days, marked by Israeli ground forces pushing their deepest advance into Lebanese territory in almost 20 years.
Concurrently, the Lebanese health ministry reported that Israeli bombardments conducted near a medical facility in the southern coastal city of Tyre on Monday resulted in four fatalities and left 127 individuals injured, a casualty count that includes 39 members of the hospital staff.