Israeli Press
Washington rebukes Katz for vowing a long Israeli stay in Lebanon
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Israel's defence minister told his soldiers in southern Lebanon that they were not leaving, and the State Department told him that is not the deal.
"The IDF is here to stay in the security zones of Lebanon, in Syria and in Gaza, to protect all of Israel," Israel Katz said on a visit to the sector. "I have instructed the army to take every step needed for a long-term presence."
An American official answered within hours, in a statement the Israeli daily Maariv reported on Thursday. Washington expects every party to act inside the agreed framework, the official said, and noted that Israel itself has stated it has no territorial ambitions in Lebanon.
A permanent Israeli presence, the official added, does not fit a framework built on a conditional, phased pull-back tied to verified Hezbollah disarmament and the dismantling of its military infrastructure.
That is the argument in one line: Israel treats the withdrawal timetable as its own to set, and its patron treats it as a sequence someone else has to certify.
Lebanon's army has begun taking over the first areas Israeli troops left, the paper reported.
For Palestinian readers the striking part of Katz's sentence is the list. Lebanon, Syria and Gaza arrive in it as three instances of one doctrine — a belt of ground held indefinitely beyond the border, its residents governed by the presence and consulted about nothing.
Roughly a quarter of a million Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon, most of them in camps within reach of that belt.
