President Donald Trump said he was "perturbed" with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel's threatened strikes on Beirut, a rare public rebuke that exposed friction between Washington and its closest Middle East ally at a delicate moment in efforts to end the regional war. Trump said he had pressed Netanyahu to call off an attack on the Lebanese capital as the United States worked toward a settlement with Iran.
Despite the intervention, Israeli airstrikes killed eight people in Lebanon, hitting towns in the Nabatieh and Tyre districts in the south of the country. Israel accused Hezbollah of violating the ceasefire that has governed the conflict and said its operations were aimed at the group's fighters and infrastructure rather than the civilian areas Lebanon's government said were struck.
The Lebanese health ministry reported that an Israeli strike on a hospital in the Tyre area had killed four people and wounded 127, including 39 health workers, an episode that drew condemnation from aid agencies and added to pressure on Washington to restrain its ally. Israel has said it targets militants who embed themselves in civilian sites, a claim Lebanese authorities and humanitarian groups dispute.
Even so, the US Embassy in Beirut said Hezbollah had accepted a proposal for a "mutual cessation of attacks," raising hopes that the latest flare-up might be contained. American officials have tied calm on the Israel-Lebanon front to the broader negotiation with Iran, which has cited Israel's operations in Lebanon and Gaza as justification for its own escalation in the Gulf.
Trump's willingness to air his displeasure publicly underscored the difficulty of holding together a diplomatic process that depends on several adversaries restraining themselves at once. The president has invested political capital in brokering an end to the fighting, and any unilateral Israeli strike on Beirut risked unravelling the parallel track with Tehran.
For Lebanon, caught between Israeli firepower and Hezbollah's calculations, the day brought both fresh casualties and a tentative signal of de-escalation. Whether the mutual halt holds will test both Israel's willingness to heed American pressure and Hezbollah's readiness to stand down while the wider regional bargaining continues.