Israel and Lebanon held a historic summit on April 14 in Washington, DC, as envoys for the two nations met with the hopes of reaching a peace deal that would end decades of conflict.
Following the meeting with his Lebanese counterpart, Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said that the meeting went about as well as it could have, as they “discovered that we’re on the same side of the equation, and that’s the most positive thing we could have come away with.”
“We are both united in liberating Lebanon from Hezbollah,” Leiter said.
The roughly two-hour meeting between Leiter and his Lebanese counterpart Nada Hamadeh Moawad marked the highest-level meeting to date between Israeli and Lebanese officials, and the first direct talks between the two neighboring countries in decades.
No date for a follow-up meeting had been set yet, although Leiter described the talks as having gone as well as they could have done, and said he expected them to pick back up in the coming weeks.
Tuesday’s summit took place against the backdrop of that conflict. It came as the Lebanese government has distanced itself from Hezbollah and made efforts to disarm the group, though Israel is skeptical of its ability to do so.
