State Department: US hasn’t determined if Israel violated Lebanon ceasefire

Matthew Miller, State Dept. spokesman, said that the ceasefire agreement, signed by Israel and Lebanon, contains a mechanism for reporting potential violations and how Washington and Paris will respond to them.

By Mike Wagenheim, JNS

The U.S. State Department said on Monday that the Israeli-Hezbollah ceasefire, which went into effect last Wednesday, is thus far “successful, broadly speaking,” with no determination yet made of accusations of Israeli violations.

Despite ongoing Israeli anti-terror strikes and Monday’s retaliation by Hezbollah, the ceasefire, brokered by the United States and France, has “been successful in stopping the fighting and getting us on a path where we are not seeing the daily loss of life that we had seen for two months prior,” Matthew Miller, the department’s spokesman, told reporters at the daily press briefing.

Miller said that violations were expected, especially in the opening weeks “when things are very fragile.”

Media reports cited Amos Hochstein, the Biden administration’s point man on the Israel-Lebanon file, as having been critical of early Israeli actions in Lebanon since the ceasefire came into effect. Miller did not confirm those reports.

The ceasefire agreement, signed by Israel and Lebanon and which has not been made public, contains a mechanism for reporting potential violations and for the ways that Washington and Paris will respond to them, he said.

That mechanism will become more formalized in the coming days, he noted.

The National, an Emirati publication, printed what it says is the entirety of the ceasefire agreement last week. JNS asked Miller if that copy of the agreement, which was reported in Israel and elsewhere, was accurate.

“I’m not going to speak to that publicly,” Miller told JNS. “We often see outlets report on various documents—sometimes that are final drafts, sometimes that are drafts along the way—but I’m not going to confirm.”

JNS asked if it isn’t in the public interest for Washington to release the agreement.

“We have a vigorous monitoring mechanism in place to ensure that everyone toes the line, and we’re going to enforce it,” Miller said.

He would not confirm reports that, under the agreement, Israel has the right to conduct strikes in Lebanese territory should it detect an imminent threat.

“But every country, both Israel—or say every country—that includes Israel and includes Lebanon as well—has the inherent right to self-defense under international law,” said Miller.

“That was a fact before the implementation of this ceasefire agreement. It remains a fact that all countries have the right to self-defense under international law.”

‘Incredibly frustrating’

Earlier in the day, the State Department and U.S. Treasury welcomed the Israeli cabinet’s decision to approve a “one-year extension of its indemnification for Israeli banks, which underpins correspondent banking relationships with Palestinian counterparts.”

That agreement protects Israeli banks doing business with Palestinian counterparts from running afoul of anti-terror laws.

Israel reportedly secured a promise from the Biden administration to maintain its veto on Palestinian statehood at the U.N. Security Council in exchange for the banking decision.

JNS asked Miller about the talks that led up to the announcement.

“We had really intense discussions with the government of Israel about intending—extending this correspondent banking agreement—much more intense conversations than should have been necessary,” Miller said.

“Obviously, the revocation of this agreement would have had disastrous effects for Palestinians in the West Bank, but the point that we kept impressing upon the government of Israel is that it would have had disastrous implications for the Israeli public as well,” he said. (The Biden administration and some others refer to Judea and Samaria as the West Bank.)

“It is not in Israel’s interests to see further instability in the West Bank. It is not in Israel’s interest to see the economy of the West Bank collapse,” Miller added.

“So, it’s incredibly frustrating that it took this long to get the government of Israel to extend this agreement for the year that it now did, something they should have just done through the regular course of business without any—let’s call it intense diplomatic efforts by the United States.”

That said, Washington “will continue to look at every resolution that comes before the United Nations Security Council, and judge whether voting ‘yes,’ voting ‘no,’ voting abstaining is in the interests of the United States, and we will make our judgments based on that and nothing else,” he added.

Miller also told JNS that Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, was scheduled to meet later in the day with Ron Dermer, the Israeli strategic affairs minister and that there were no planned meetings at the State Department with Yoav Gallant, the former Israeli defense minister, who is in town.