The Vice President of the Lebanese Council of Ministers, Tarek Mitri. (Photo provided by Mr. Mitri.)
Lebanese Deputy Prime Minister, Tarek Mitri, denied in an interview with the American Arabic-language channel al-Horra that the Lebanese government "has received any official request to sign a peace agreement with Israel."
"We have not come under direct pressure from anyone, but there are pressures on certain political leaders as well as unofficial moves in the United States to encourage the American administration to condition its support for Lebanon on its entry into a normalization process with Israel," Mitri said.
When asked what Lebanon's response would be if asked to normalize relations with Israel, Tarek Mitri stated: "We are not ready for that, but we are not yet at the point where we have to choose between signing peace or seeing Israel continue to occupy part of Lebanese territory."
These statements come as Massaad Boulos, the Lebanese-American advisor to Donald Trump for Arab and Middle Eastern affairs, met Sunday at his home in Washington with an Israeli settlement official in the occupied West Bank, with whom he discussed the hope for 'concrete results' regarding a peace agreement between Israel and Lebanon. The United States is said to have given guarantees to Israel to allow it to continue occupying at least five positions in southern Lebanon, an occupation condemned by Lebanon and France, another guarantor of the cease-fire agreement that came into effect at the end of November after two months of massive Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon, the Bekaa, and the southern suburbs of Beirut, as well as other regions of the country, and daily Hezbollah firing at northern Israel.
'There is a blatant Israeli violation of the cease-fire agreement and resolution 1701, while the Lebanese army fully fulfills its duty south of the Litani by dismantling Hezbollah's depots and strengthening control over the area covered by the agreement," Mitri denounced in this context. "Israel invokes several security pretexts not to withdraw from the five disputed points, but the real undeclared reason is that it seeks to force Lebanon to sit at the same table to conduct direct negotiations between the two countries."
When questioned about the disarmament of Hezbollah, with U.N. Security Council resolution 1701 providing, among other things, that the Lebanese state must have exclusive control of weapons on its territory, Mitri asserted that it was "impossible for the government to establish a timetable for the withdrawal of Hezbollah's arms by force."
Mitri also denied "any official request aiming to politically eliminate Hezbollah, although a bill presented before the American Congress seems to go in this direction.' He specified that 'some Lebanese parties in the United States support this initiative." Mitri refers to the "Pager Act," a bill that seeks to suspend American aid to the Lebanese army "as long as the Lebanese authorities have not revoked their recognition of Hezbollah, as well as its parliamentary group, the Loyalty to the Resistance bloc, and the affiliated militia group, the Amal movement."
The Deputy Prime Minister also said that "France will host a conference of Lebanon’s friends and supporters in April or May for reconstruction." "This conference, currently being prepared, will be preceded by a preliminary meeting," he added. He emphasized that "one of the reconstruction criteria is Lebanon's commitment to creating an independent fund, managed transparently and free from cronyism and corruption," adding that "this fund is being formed with the help of the World Bank and other institutions."
Regarding appointments, Mitri indicated that 'at the next Cabinet meeting, or the one that follows it, a commander of the Lebanese army will be appointed, followed by other security service heads. "The appointment of a governor of the Bank of Lebanon will not take more than two or three weeks, and several names are in the running for this post,' he also said.
Mitri denied "any disagreement between the President of the Republic, Joseph Aoun, and the Prime Minister, Nawaf Salam, on this matter" and assured that "the government prioritizes competence and aptitude in its appointments and that there is no will to exclude any Lebanese component from the process."
Finally, on the subject of the 2025 budget, which was adopted Thursday by decree without going through Parliament, Mitri indicated that "the 2025 budget includes excessive taxes and fines for the Lebanese." "This week, Finance Minister Yassine Jaber will present to the government a new supplementary bill aimed at reducing these taxes to make them less burdensome for citizens," he assured.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and several members of his team justified this procedure by the lack of time available to them, committing on the one hand to prepare a bill concerning the taxes provided for in the previous government's text, and to work on a genuinely "reformist" 2026 budget.