Regarding the negotiation file, after each party expressed its opinion on the awaited test with Israel, from which there is no escape while anticipating how President Donald Trump will bring it out, it becomes clear that President Nabih Berri’s response to President Joseph Aoun led to the brakes on the second’s movement. This does not mean that he will back down from the choice he made while carefully anticipating what he expects from the White House, if he visits it alone or with Benjamin Netanyahu.
It has become known that Berri, who does not cut off his channels with Washington despite his good monitoring of Trump’s policies and what his ambassador in Beirut, Michel Issa, is doing, still insists on telling his mediators and diplomats to work quickly to establish a ceasefire first, before entering into negotiations. Aoun does not miss this trend, even with a different approach between the two men, which applied to the government. If the ministers of the Lebanese Forces and Phalange support Aoun, other ministers warn against diving into negotiations before obtaining American guarantees, not the least of which is ensuring that the Israeli war stops and withdrawal from the occupied territories.
After the US embassy’s statement and his invitation to a meeting between Aoun and Netanyahu, Berri asked, as his visitors reported: “Have we moved from Anjar to Awkar?” In reference to Syria’s intervention during the days of Bashar al-Assad, where there was no chemistry between them, unlike his relationship with his father, Hafez al-Assad.
When Berri criticizes Awkar, he knows very well that America’s role and position in the region cannot be ignored, especially in the last two years on the basis that it remains the only party capable of preventing Israel from continuing its war at a time when Hezbollah does not announce a retreat from the confrontation option it took under the slogan of supporting Iran.
A ministerial source says that it is difficult for Aoun to go to the negotiations and his meeting with Netanyahu without receiving Berri’s cover in light of the strong opposition from “Hezbollah” due to the failure to reduce the “Shiite veto,” as there was thought among supporters of the negotiation option that the Speaker of the Council would convince the party of the feasibility of these negotiations.
Aoun responds to the arrows directed at him by saying that what Lebanon is doing so far is a “prelude to negotiations,” and that there is no need to remind him of the preservation of Lebanon’s sovereignty and his keenness on an Israeli withdrawal from all the occupied areas in the south and the return of the people to their towns. He received a question from a minister in the duo: “We want a clear answer to the US State Department’s statement and Netanyahu’s position.” The President of the Republic responded here, “Let Netanyahu say what he wants, especially since Trump does not yield to him.”
A minister in the “duo” believes that Aoun is well aware of the meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister, even if he will respond to Trump’s invitation immediately and prefer it without Netanyahu. The “duo” here calls on him “not to go too far on this path, as it is not possible to build on illusions and promises about the future of southern Lebanon.”
In parallel with the position of Aoun and the Shiite team in the government, there is talk of a different approach by President Nawaf Salam regarding the negotiations, and he does not object to them, knowing that a significant number of Sunni representatives support the conduct of the negotiations, and this was translated by the meeting with a number of them the day before yesterday at the invitation of Representative Fouad Makhzoumi.
