Lebanon's president says his country can no longer be considered an arena for anyone's wars. In a televised address, Joseph Fun said his government's negotiations with Israel this week were not a sign of weakness. Pain cannot remain our destiny, and I pledge that we will not reach any agreement that may undermine our established rights or harm the dignity of our steadfast people or give up a grain of soil of our homeland. Our objective is clear. To put an end to the Israeli aggression on our people and our homeland, the total withdrawal of the Israelis, for our authority to prevail,

and the return of all Lebanese with dignity and freedom. President Trump has made remarks on Lebanon, saying in a social media post that the US will separately work with Lebanon and deal with the Hezbollah situation in an appropriate manner. Israel, he says, will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. they are prohibited from doing so by the USA. Enough is enough. Let's speak to Abu Shahari about this. He's a political commentator joining us from Jaffa in Israel. Quite uh the strong language there from the US president against Israel. Israel forbidden

from bombing Lebanon. How is this going down in Israel? Uh a lot of confusion. uh everything about the current ceasefire surprised everyone and it's quite obvious that the Israeli government uh doesn't want to anger the American president. If you go through the Twitter account or ex accounts of the Israeli uh cabinet ministers uh none of them said anything against Donald Trump, none of them said anything against the ceasefire. Uh and we're saying we're seeing how Israel is acting extremely cautious, not trying to upset the American president. This

came by a surprise a day after the cabinet decided not to agree to a ceasefire and then both them and Israeli public were informed about the ceasefire through uh the President Donald Trump uh social media. But for President Trump to use the word prohibited and enough is enough, that's a huge blow to Israel and Neta in particular, isn't it? Uh it shows the power dynamic. It shows which country is the superpower. But again, we've seen it in the past on the when the genocide in Gaza. It's not the first time that the American

President Donald Trump forces a ceasefire whether it was with Iran the last week and whether it was in forcing the uh second stage of the ceasefire. Um but at the end of the day America pushes its own interest and this time it didn't align with the Israeli interest. Uh what's what's more interesting is that Trump is focusing on a peace a long standing peace between the two countries. It looks like he's trying to also gain some sort of another new normalization project between Israel and another Arab country, this time being Lebanon. But still

there are significant issues whether uh Lebanese or Israeli. In the Lebanese case, nobody has any answer concerning this army. And in Israel, nobody's talking about or nobody's thinking about uh pulling back from the northern and the northern Lebanon in sorry southern uh Lebanon from the Lean for the 8 to 10 kilometers that they reached in the past uh couple of weeks. So we need to see how it works out. But apparently the Israelis have also a lot of internal problems on this issue. So, so when they meet in uh in the US in a few days, the Lebanese President and Prime Minister Netanyahu as was announced by President Trump,

what are they going to be talking about? What are they going to be agreeing on from the Israeli perspective? It's the question of disarming Hezbollah and how do you disarm Hezbollah? Nobody has a proper answer to this question. The Lebanese obviously is the withdrawal. Now there is also 13 points on the Israeli Libanese border but it's not extremely significant. Uh there's going to be negotiation on this but now the two main issues is the Israeli withdrawal from uh southern Lebanon and disarming Hezbollah. Both of them look extremely difficult for both sides.

So do you think the ceasefire can last or will Netanyahu sabotage it? Again, it depends on the American president. Um, there's pressure in Israel against the ceasefire. Today, Kirach may uh declared as a protest against the ceasefire that he's planning to go on a strike, the municipal strike, including school as a protest. And they were starting to talk about a national protest against the ceasefire. The Israeli public wasn't promised peace. The Israeli public was promised absolute victory. are not the same. They're not expecting peace with the Lebanon. They're

extremely skeptic about it because of their uh past uh experiences with peace project with the Lebanon. Um and now they don't have any proper answer concerning Hezbollah and there is also the question of Iran's role uh in the background uh that it's not it's still not clear for the Israeli public. Thank you so much for talking to us about this. Thank you for bringing us a view there from Israel. Abage Abu Shaharia, a political commentator joining us from Jaff.