US team in Beirut to discuss Israeli withdrawal
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• Israeli strikes continue in southern Lebanon despite truce
• Visiting US lawmaker Ro Khanna detained by armed Israeli settlers in occupied West Bank
BEIRUT/ TURMUS AYYA: A US military delegation met with Lebanon’s army in Beirut to discuss the implementation of Israel’s withdrawal from a “pilot zone” in occupied territory, a Lebanese military official told AFP on Saturday.
Meanwhile, US Democratic lawmaker Ro Khanna said he was detained by Israeli settlers armed with US-made rifles during a West Bank visit this week.
Under a framework agreement reached on June 26, Israel will gradually withdraw from areas of southern Lebanon where it has deployed troops to fight Hezbollah.
As part of the agreement, the long-disempowered Lebanese military will take full control of two small areas dubbed pilot zones.
“The American military delegation arrived and began meetings with the Lebanese army command to discuss the mechanisms for implementing the first pilot zone from which the Israelis will withdraw, allowing the Lebanese army to deploy,” the official said, requesting anonymity.
“This is the main objective the American military delegation is bringing to Lebanon… it is the translation and implementation of the framework agreement.”
US ambassador Michel Issa told President Joseph Aoun on Thursday that the American delegation was coming to “determine the mechanism” for the deal’s implementation.
In Washington, a US official had said on condition of anonymity that “the first pilot zone will launch in a matter of days, and further pilot zones are being mapped out and planned”.
US Central Command will coordinate on the zones with both countries, he said.
The agreement — rejected by Hezbollah — does not set a timetable for Israel’s withdrawal, and Israeli officials have also vowed that their forces will remain in a “security zone” 10 kilometres (six miles) deep as long as Hezbollah remains armed.
The war, which began in early March, displaced more than a million people in Lebanon, according to the UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA.
On Saturday the agency said more than 732,000 people had now returned home, up from 640,000 a week before.
Israel has pursued intermittent strikes despite a truce in its war with Hezbollah, with Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reporting several in the south on Saturday.
The latest talks between Lebanon and Israel, which have no formal relations but have met for five rounds of negotiations since the start of the war, will take place in Rome next Wednesday and Thursday.
Lebanon conditions its participation on Israel withdrawing from two pilot zones.
The talks precede Aoun’s expected visit to Washington later this month at the invitation of his American counterpart Donald Trump.
On the other hand, an Israeli drone has dropped a sound bomb on the municipality of al-Mansouri, in southern Lebanon’s Tyre district, the country’s National News Agency reports.
Democrat detained
US Democratic lawmaker Ro Khanna said he was detained by Israeli settlers armed with US-made rifles during a West Bank visit this week that he cast as an unfiltered look at the human toll of Israeli occupation as he weighs a 2028 presidential run.
Speaking with Reuters on Thursday in a Palestinian village, Khanna said his group’s van was surrounded by settlers wielding M4 rifles a day earlier while touring a part of the southern West Bank where residents face frequent settler attacks.
“And these hoodlums come in with machine guns M4, an American-made machine gun and they detain us. They block off the road. And then they call the IDF and the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans,” Khanna said, referring to the Israeli military.
Published in Dawn, July 12th, 2026
