Secretary of State Marco Rubio along with Israel and Lebanon’s Ambassadors announced a framework agreement Friday (June 26, 2026) that was described as a first step toward peace following months of conflict between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

The agreement does not include Hezbollah and prompted one of the group’s officials in Lebanon to warn of civil war. The U.S. State Department said the framework establishes a process for dismantling Hezbollah and for Lebanon to regain territory that was taken by Israeli forces as they battled the militant group.

The US will facilitate a newly created “Military Coordination Group for Lebanon” to implement the framework, the State Department said, while committing $100 million in humanitarian assistance.

“For Lebanon, this Framework provides a genuine pathway out of a long crisis,” the State Department said. “For Israel, it creates a verifiable path to removing the persistent threat on its northern border.” Friday’s (June 26, 2026) agreement was signed in front of Mr. Rubio in Washington by Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, and Nada Hamadeh Moawad, the Lebanese ambassador to the United States.

Mr. Leiter said the final destination of the framework is peace between the two countries.

“Our language is we want to embrace Lebanon,” he said. “Our language is we want to get in our car in Tel Aviv and take a drive up to Beirut, and we want Beirut to come down and take a drive to Tel Aviv. That’s where we’re going. That’s where we want to go.” Mr. Leiter said that will depend on Hezbollah being disarmed and dismantled, which will allow Israel to withdraw and Lebanon to “regain its full sovereignty.”

“So it really depends on the Lebanese army,” Mr. Leiter said. “It depends on the support the Lebanese army gets from the US. And we think it’s going to be solid.” Mr. Moawad said the framework “is a first step on the road to restoring Lebanese sovereignty and territorial integrity, securing a permanent and final cessation of hostilities, enabling our people to go back to their land and allowing all Lebanese to live in peace, security and prosperity.”

 Hezbollah official says group won’t give up weapons

The latest conflict began when Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel days after Israel and the U.S. launched their war on Iran on February 28. Israel invaded Lebanon and has expanded its control.

More than 4,000 people in Lebanon have been killed in Israeli strikes since March. At least 37 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Lebanon or northern Israel during the fighting.

Lebanese officials have said that securing a withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon is a top priority for them in the negotiations, while Israeli officials have prioritized the disarmament of the Iran-backed Hezbollah.

The talks between Israel and Lebanon were separate from the interim deal that was signed last week by the leaders of the U.S. and Iran to end the fighting in the Islamic Republic. That agreement set a 60-day period for negotiations on key issues, including the future of Tehran’s nuclear programme amid concerns that Iran wants to use it for military purposes, a claim the country denies.

The Lebanese government had been wary of having Iran negotiate on its behalf, and Lebanon launched its own direct negotiations with Israel after the outbreak of the latest Israel-Hezbollah war. Hezbollah was not part of the talks, which resulted in several ceasefire agreements that were never implemented on the ground.

Hezbollah is unlikely to agree to any plan that would include its disarmament throughout the country. The group has maintained that it is only required by previous agreements and UN resolutions to disarm in the area south of the Litani River, near Lebanon’s border with Israel.

Hassan Fadlallah, a member of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, reiterated the group’s stance on Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV that it rejects Lebanon’s direct negotiations with Israel and that it will not give up its weapons.

Mr. Fadlallah said Lebanese authorities “will not be able to enforce the agreement signed in Washington unless they go, with American support, to civil war.” He also called the agreement in Washington “an attempt to derail the Islamabad process,” referring to the U.S.-Iran negotiations.

Israel establishes ‘pilot zones’ for Lebanon

 Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said in a statement that the agreement “aims to achieve an Israeli withdrawal from all Lebanese territory, restore state sovereignty over it, and facilitate the return of its citizens” and that under it Lebanon is obligated to “extend the authority of the Lebanese state, through its armed forces, over all its territory.”

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun had told a visiting British parliamentary delegation on Wednesday (June 24, 2026) that a proposal for “pilot zones” where the Lebanese army is supposed to take exclusive control of the territory as Israeli troops will withdraw was “under discussion pending approval from the Israeli side.”

Israel’s direct negotiations with Lebanon include discussions about the redeployment of Israeli forces after southern Lebanon is cleared of Hezbollah infrastructure and Hezbollah has disarmed, said an Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video on Friday (June 26, 2026) that the framework is a “great achievement” for Israel.

“The most important thing, first and foremost, is that Israel will remain in the security zone in southern Lebanon,” he said. “This is a major achievement, and we will maintain it as long as Hezbollah has not been disarmed and as long as it continues to pose a threat to the State of Israel.” Mr. Netanyahu said that Israel is allowing the Lebanese army to begin preparing to take control of territory, while the Israeli military is establishing two pilot zones.

“A small part of it is within the expanded security zone that we secured over the past two weeks and which, the IDF has made absolutely clear, it does not need,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “In other words, we are maintaining the original security zone at all times, outside the range of anti-tank missiles.”

Published – June 27, 2026 12:17 am IST

Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem, is seen on a screen during a sermon marking the first day of Ashoura, the Shiite Muslim commemoration of the 7th-century death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at the grave of late Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, left, in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, June 17, 2026.
| Photo Credit: AP

This photograph shows the destruction after an Israeli airstrike that targeted the southern coastal city of Tyre’s Al Hosh neighborhood, on March 19, 2026. Lebanon was drawn into the Middle East war on March 2 when militant group Hezbollah launched rockets towards Israel to avenge the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Coded messages, landline phones, and pagers: following the killing of senior commanders in targeted Israeli airstrikes, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group, Hezbollah, has been using some low-tech strategies to try to evade its foe’s sophisticated surveillance technology, informed sources said.

The sides have been trading fire since Hezbollah’s Palestinian ally in the Gaza Strip, Hamas, attacked Israel in October last year, triggering the ongoing war. While the fighting on Lebanon’s southern border has remained relatively contained, stepped-up attacks in recent weeks have intensified concern that it could spiral into a full-scale war.

Tens of thousands of people have fled both sides of the border. Israeli strikes have killed more than 330 Hezbollah fighters and around 90 civilians in Lebanon.

Israel says attacks from Lebanon have killed 21 soldiers and 10 civilians.

As domestic pressure builds in Israel over Hezbollah’s barrages, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has highlighted its ability to hit the group’s operatives across the border.

Electronic surveillance technology plays a vital role in these strikes. The IDF has said it has security cameras and remote sensing systems trained on areas where Hezbollah operates, and it regularly sends surveillance drones over the border to spy on its adversary.

Israel’s electronic eavesdropping is also widely regarded as among the world’s most sophisticated.

Hezbollah has learned from its losses and adapted its tactics in response, six sources familiar with the group’s operations said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters.

Cell phones, which can be used to track a user’s location, have been banned from the battlefield in favour of more old-fashioned communication means, including pagers and couriers who deliver verbal messages in person, two of the sources said.

Hezbollah has also been using a private, fixed-line telecommunications network dating back to the early 2000s, three sources said.

Code words

In case conversations are overheard, code words are used for weapons and meeting sites, according to another source familiar with the group’s logistics. These are updated nearly daily and delivered to units via couriers, the source said. “We’re facing a battle in which information and technology are essential parts,” said Qassem Kassir, a Lebanese analyst close to Hezbollah. “But when you face certain technological advances, you need to go back to the old methods… whatever method allows you to circumvent the technology.”

Hezbollah’s media office said it had no comment on the sources’ assertions.

Security experts say some low-tech countermeasures can be quite effective against high-tech spying. One of the ways that al-Qaeda’s late leader, Osama bin Laden, evaded capture for nearly a decade was by disconnecting from the Internet and phone services, and using couriers instead.

“The simple act of using a VPN (virtual private network), or better yet, not using a cell phone at all, can make it much harder to find and fix a target,” said Emily Harding, a former CIA analyst now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.

Hezbollah and Lebanese security officials believe Israel has also been tapping local informants as it zeroes in on targets.

Lebanon’s economic crisis and rivalries between political factions have created opportunities for Israeli recruiters, but not all informants realise who they are speaking with, three sources said.

On November 22, a woman from south Lebanon received a call on her cell phone from a person claiming to be a local official, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the incident. Speaking in flawless Arabic, the caller asked whether the family was home, the sources said. No, the woman replied, explaining they had travelled to eastern Lebanon. Minutes later, a missile slammed into the woman’s home in the village of Beit Yahoun, killing five Hezbollah fighters including Abbas Raad, the son of a senior Hezbollah lawmaker and a Radwan member, the sources said.

Hezbollah believes Israel had tracked the fighters to the location and placed the call to confirm whether there were civilians present before launching the strike, they said without disclosing further details.

Within weeks, Hezbollah was publicly warning supporters via the affiliated Al-Nour radio station not to trust cold callers claiming to be local officials or aid workers, saying Israelis were impersonating them to identify houses being used by Hezbollah.

Hezbollah also suspected that Israel was targeting its fighters by tracking their cell phones and monitoring video feeds from security cameras installed on buildings in border communities, two sources familiar with the group’s thinking and a Lebanese intelligence official said.

On December 28, Hezbollah urged southern residents in a statement distributed via its Telegram channel to disconnect any security cameras they own from the Internet.

By early February, another directive had been issued to Hezbollah’s fighters: no mobile phones anywhere near the battlefield. “Today, if anyone is found with their phone on the front, he is kicked out of Hezbollah,” said a senior Lebanese source familiar with the group’s operations.

Even in Beirut, senior Hezbollah politicians avoid bringing phones with them to meetings, two other sources said.

Nicholas Blanford, a Beirut-based security consultant who has written a history of Hezbollah, said the group’s “awareness and wariness” of security breaches was at an all-time high. “Hezbollah has had to tighten up its security far more than it needed to do in earlier conflicts,” he said. However, Israel retains a technological advantage, Mr. Blanford said.