Israel and Lebanon extend ceasefire for three weeks, Trump says

The 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, due to expire Sunday, will be extended for three weeks, President Donald Trump said Thursday during the second round of peace talks at the White House.

The announcement of an extension, which had been requested by Lebanon, came as Trump and Vice President JD Vance joined participants of the talks in the Oval Office. Led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and State Department Counselor Michael Needham, Israel and Lebanon were represented by their ambassadors to the U.S. The U.S. ambassadors to Lebanon and Israel also participated.

Israel and Lebanon had agreed to the extension of “an additional three weeks of, I guess no firing, ceasefire, no more firing. And we’re going to be working with Lebanon to get things straightened out in that country. I really believe it’s something we can do pretty easily,” Trump told reporters admitted to the Oval Office where participants were seated on sofas.

Trump said he would invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun to meet with him at the White House in the near future.

Expressing the same optimism that he has voiced of victory regarding the temporary ceasefire standoff with Tehran, he said, “I think it’s the beginning of ... a wonderful thing, to get this worked out simultaneously with what we’re doing in Iran.”

The Israel-Lebanon ceasefire has been only tenuously observed, with reduced but continued attacks by Israel and Hezbollah.

Hezbollah has not officially recognized the pause in hostilities and on Thursday launched its first missile attack on northern Israel since the ceasefire went into effect April 16. The Israel Defense Forces said the missiles had been intercepted.

Israel has continued sporadic bombing attacks in what it says is “self defense” permitted under the ceasefire, and tens of thousands IDF troops occupying southern Lebanon have continued attacks against alleged militants and their infrastructure.

Each side has accused the other of violating the ceasefire.

The strikes, however, have laid bare the elephant in the room of the fragile peace talks. Israel is at war with Iran-backed Hezbollah, not Lebanon. And while face-to-face talks between the two neighboring countries for the first time in decades are historic, they owe their existence to the war between the United States and Iran, and their likelihood of success is at least in part linked to the separate — and halting — ceasefire negotiations between Washington and Tehran.

Hezbollah inserted itself into that conflict by declaring its allegiance to Tehran after the start of the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran on Feb. 28, launching a massive rocket attack on northern Israel. Israel responded by sending troops into southern Lebanon, displacing the population and destroying homes, and launching air attacks on Beirut.

Lebanon this week put the death toll from Israeli attacks since early March at 2,454, with 7,658 people wounded, while Israel said 16 of its troops had been killed and 690 wounded.

The three-week extension “gives everybody time to continue to work on what’s going to be a permanent peace between two countries,” Rubio said. “What’s standing in the way is ... a terrorist organization that operates within their national territory that needs to be eliminated.”

Neither Trump nor participants revealed any other substance of their private discussions beyond the ceasefire extension.

More than 1.2 million Lebanese have been displaced by the fighting, most of them from the south. Many of them have returned during the ceasefire, despite Israeli warnings, to find their homes destroyed.

Despite the ceasefire extension, there is little optimism that these low-level talks will bring an end to decades of hostility between Israel and Hezbollah. In addition to its military, Hezbollah is a powerful political force in Lebanon, where factionalism has frequently led to internal violence.

Experts who have followed the conflict through at least a half-dozen Israeli invasions and occupations of southern Lebanon over the years — and the thousands of Hezbollah rockets rained on northern Israeli communities — have described the talks as the first stage of an opportunity whose success depends largely on the Trump administration’s attention span and commitment.

“The talks are important because they’re happening, not because of any substance” so far, said a former U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide a candid assessment.

A ceasefire negotiated in 2024 by the Biden administration included extensive assistance to the Lebanese military and agreements by the Lebanese government that it ultimately was too hesitant and weak to enforce.

“They said they would clear southern Lebanon” of Hezbollah, said Fadi Nicholas Nassar, a fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “That proved not to be true. Lebanon said they would demilitarize and outlaw Hezbollah military activities” in both the south, where a large Shiite population forms the group’s base of support, and in Beirut, the capital. Neither of those things happened.

“The big worry in Lebanon is that if they confront Hezbollah, they will be left alone” to deal with the militants and with Israel, Nassar said. “What Washington can do in this moment is shift the calculus and empower those actors who are willing to confront Hezbollah … and raise the cost for obstruction.”

The Biden deal, which included mentorship and backup on the ground by U.S. and European forces, quickly fell victim to violations by both Israel and Hezbollah, and the new Trump administration turned its attention elsewhere.

The administration “never expanded the mechanism as it was written,” the former official said. “They had weak representation … the important people in the U.S. weren’t paying attention to Lebanon over the past year.”

In the fall, the Trump administration allocated about $250 million to the Lebanese security forces, contingent upon verified measures to disarm Hezbollah and dismantle its military infrastructure in southern Lebanon. Those tasks may now become easier if Iranian aid to Hezbollah is curtailed and the Lebanese government can demonstrate both the willingness and sufficient force to undertake demobilization and disarming efforts.

Asked by reporters in the Oval Office if the help he intended to provide Lebanon would include direct military assistance, Trump demurred, saying; “We’re just going to help them. They’re great people. It can be a really good country again. ... And I think you have all the ingredients.”

Even if it can take steps toward removing Hezbollah as a military force, however, the government’s sovereignty is deeply compromised by Israel’s occupation. With Israeli troops now controlling a large swath of southern Lebanon as a “buffer zone,” Israel has shown little inclination to leave. Some members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have called for annexation of the territory.

Late last month, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Israel should establish a new northern border along the Litani River, about 25 miles inside Lebanon. “The current war in Lebanon must end with a radical change, beyond the vanquishing of the terror group Hezbollah,” Smotrich said.

“The Litani must be our new border with the state of Lebanon, just like the ‘Yellow Line’” that delineates the half of Gaza still occupied by Israel, he said in an address to his Religious Zionism Party, a key component of Netanyahu’s coalition government. Trump’s Gaza peace plan calls for Israel’s eventual withdrawal from all of the territory once Hamas militants are disarmed — a process that has not begun six months after a ceasefire was signed there.

Earlier this month, 18 Israeli lawmakers, including members of Netanyahu’s Likud party and Religious Zionism, wrote to members of his cabinet demanding that they “move toward a fundamental change in Lebanon, including the full occupation until the Litani River … and the complete evacuation of the population.”

In a speech Wednesday at Israel’s Memorial Day ceremony for fallen soldiers, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar called Lebanon a “failed state … that is de facto under Iranian occupation through Hezbollah.” Israel, he said, was willing to work with the Lebanese government against their common enemy.

“We don’t have any serious disagreements with Lebanon,” Saar said. “There are few minor border disputes that can be solved.”

“What matters now is not just words, it’s the attention,” and substantive outside support for the Lebanese government and its military as it attempts to disarm Hezbollah, the Middle East Institute’s Nassar said. “But it takes time to get those steps right. Keeping Washington … focused is the only way out.”