On the same Thursday this week, the Israeli who negotiated the framework agreement with Lebanon and the Lebanese parliament speaker most aligned with Hezbollah gave opposite readings of the same document. Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter told the Jewish People Policy Institute podcast that the agreement’s central purpose is dismantling Hezbollah, not an Israeli withdrawal. Hours later, in the Lebanese newspaper Al-Diyar, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri called the framework “an agreement of sedition” aimed at pushing the Lebanese army into a fight with Hezbollah.
The two readings explain why a deal announced in Washington on June 26 is now caught between its signatories. The framework, unveiled by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio that day, ties any Israeli redeployment from southern Lebanon to verified Hezbollah disarmament. Israel, through its own ambassador, says dismantling Hezbollah comes first and Israeli withdrawal follows once that is done. Lebanon’s most powerful parliamentary figure says the document is a sedition deal aimed at dividing his country.
What the Framework Agreement Actually Says
The framework deal was signed on June 26 in Washington, with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio presiding over the ceremony. Rubio described it at the signing as “the beginning of the beginning,” adding that “there is a lot of work ahead.” The text of the framework agreement released that day describes a “sequenced process” in which the Lebanese army restores “effective sovereign authority over all Lebanese territory, pending the verified disarmament of non-state armed groups,” a phrase clearly aimed at Hezbollah. It marks the first direct diplomatic engagement between Israel and Lebanon in decades. The Lebanese government signed; Hezbollah did not.
Only after “successful disarmament of non-state armed groups and dismantlement of their infrastructure in these zones,” the framework says, can Israel “progressively redeploy.” Two “pilot zones” in southern Lebanon are the first sites where that sequence would be tested. The deal also creates a trilateral Military Coordination Group for Lebanon to oversee implementation, and includes a clause stating that Israel “declares it has no territorial ambitions” in Lebanon, a line Israeli officials have already publicly contradicted. The text sets no fixed date for an Israeli withdrawal from the roughly one-fifth of Lebanon Israel continues to occupy.
Why Leiter Says Withdrawal Isn’t the Point
This week, the man who led Israel’s delegation in the talks set out his reading of the deal in his podcast remarks on the agreement. Leiter said the deal’s stated central mission had been misread. Israeli forces would stay inside their security zone in southern Lebanon until two conditions are met: the Lebanese army has full control over the entire area south of the Litani River, and Hezbollah no longer maintains an armed presence there. The withdrawal, he added, depends on “conditions on the ground, not on a fixed timetable.”
The focus of the agreement is the dismantling of Hezbollah, not Israel’s withdrawal.
That line was spoken by Leiter in his Thursday interview with the Jewish People Policy Institute’s podcast. The framing turns the framework from a peace pact into a campaign objective. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told reporters earlier in the week that Israel would remain “until Hezbollah disarms, and I think also beyond that, because we need defendable borders.” Smotrich sits inside the Israeli cabinet that approved the framework. Leiter also denied a report that he had raised his voice at Netanyahu during the negotiations.
Berri’s ‘Agreement of Sedition’
The same Thursday, Berri gave a reading of the framework in Al-Diyar that could not have been more different. A long-time Hezbollah ally who controls Lebanon’s largest parliamentary bloc, Berri accused Israel of trying to push the Lebanese army into a fight with Hezbollah. He warned that scenario “will not happen.” Berri also said the deal was an agreement of sedition, echoing the “fitna” he had used a few days earlier to describe the same document.
My people in Lebanon, all of Lebanon, this is sectarian strife.
Berri, Lebanon’s parliament speaker, gave that line in an earlier round of public warnings on the framework, as he tried to head off sectarian division at home. Berri’s reading inverts the document’s stated logic. Where the framework’s text places disarmament before withdrawal, Berri places the army’s refusal to fight Hezbollah at the centre of any durable settlement. In earlier remarks he described the deal as a “sedition deal” and argued that the deal’s pilot zones were designed to put the Lebanese Armed Forces on a collision course with Hezbollah inside the south.
| Party | Role | Position on the framework | Stated venue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marco Rubio | US Secretary of State | “Beginning of the beginning” of a sequenced process | Signing ceremony, June 26 |
| Yechiel Leiter | Israeli Ambassador to the US | Dismantling Hezbollah, not withdrawal | JPPI podcast, July 2 |
| Bezalel Smotrich | Israeli Finance Minister | Stay until Hezbollah disarms and ‘beyond’ | Press remarks, week of June 26 |
| Nawaf Salam | Lebanese Prime Minister | Aims at Israel’s full withdrawal | Social media, June 26 |
| Joseph Aoun | Lebanese President | “First step” toward full sovereignty | Public statement, June 26 |
| Nabih Berri | Lebanese Parliament Speaker | “Agreement of sedition” | Al-Diyar interview, July 2 |
| Naim Qassem | Hezbollah Secretary-General | “Humiliating, shameful and a surrender of sovereignty” | Statement, June 27 |
| Hassan Fadlallah | Hezbollah MP | Army enforcement would lead to “civil war” | Public remarks, June 26 |
Berri proposed a different framework: an “international umbrella group” of the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Iran as essential guarantors of any durable arrangement, a track shaped by the wider US-Iran diplomacy and how Trump’s Iran deal intersected the Lebanon track. Lebanon’s executive offices, the prime minister and the presidency, have backed the framework; the parliament speaker has not.
Hezbollah’s Rejection and the Question on the Ground
Hezbollah was not at the signing table and has not accepted the document. Secretary-General Naim Qassem rejected the framework in his full statement the day after the signing, calling it “humiliating, shameful and a surrender of sovereignty.” He has insisted Israel must leave Lebanon unconditionally and rejected any normalisation with Israel. Hassan Fadlallah, a Hezbollah member of the Lebanese parliament, sharpened the warning: any attempt by the Lebanese army to enforce a Washington-brokered agreement would lead to “civil war.”
The deal’s compliance machinery rests on Hezbollah doing what its leadership says it will not. The framework’s pilot zones require the Lebanese army to deploy into vacated Israeli positions and assume full security responsibility once disarmament is verified. Israeli strikes that continued on the day of the signing, including one in the town of Mayfadoun that killed two people according to local reporting, are the conditions under which that deployment would have to happen. A Lebanese military source denied to Al Jazeera that Israel had taken the Ali al-Taher heights in southern Lebanon, a glimpse of the information fight already running parallel to the deal. By the day after the signing, the Lebanese Health Ministry had counted at least 4,246 people killed since March 2. They continue to occupy roughly one-fifth of the country, with the Lebanese state and Hezbollah both contesting the precise line Israeli forces have settled into.
The Lebanese Army Caught in the Middle
The Lebanese Armed Forces are the actor the framework turns on. They are the body that would have to enter the pilot zones, verify any disarmament of Hezbollah, and hold the territory Israel vacates. Berri, who as parliament speaker is a long-time Hezbollah ally, has warned in plain language that the army should not be put in that position. “Israel is seeking to draw the Lebanese army into clashes with the resistance, and this is its true objective,” he told Al-Diyar, in his interview warning on the deal. “This will not happen.”
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun called the framework the first step on the path towards Lebanon restoring its sovereignty over all its territory. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said the deal “aims to achieve Israel’s withdrawal from all Lebanese territories.” Both leaders framed it as a sovereignty-restoration pact; the parliament speaker framed it as an opening wedge. Inside the pilot zones, all three readings would have to operate at once.
On the ground, the deal has not slowed the war. On June 26, the day of the signing, Israeli strikes killed two people in Mayfadoun and hit Nabatieh al-Fawqa, and the Israeli military dropped leaflets in al-Mansouri ordering residents to leave. Berri’s warning came in the days that followed, by which point the framework’s text was unchanged and the trilateral Military Coordination Group had not been seated.
Israeli and Lebanese state sources continue to disagree on the basic facts of who controls what in the south. That information dispute is itself one of the framework’s preconditions: the pilot zones cannot be designated until both sides agree on the line Israeli forces are pulling back from.
Where the Deal Stands a Week In
Since the June 26 signing, the framework’s text is unchanged and its implementation is not underway. The two initial pilot zones have not been designated. The trilateral Military Coordination Group has not convened. The Israeli air strikes that continued on the day of the deal have continued since, with no public change in tempo from either side. Reports from southern Lebanon have at times contradicted each other on basic facts of who controls what, including the earlier Israeli and Lebanese denials of the US pullback.
The framework’s text says Israel redeploys only after verified Hezbollah disarmament. Leiter, on the JPPI podcast, said Israel leaves when conditions allow it to. Berri, in Al-Diyar, said Israel never planned to leave at all. The text itself does not resolve which of those three readings the implementation will follow. To date, none of them has been put to the test. The pilot zones that would force the choice remain undrawn.
