IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said during a visit to troops posted in southern Lebanon on Wednesday that there “is no ceasefire,” as Israel and Hezbollah continued to exchange fire despite a truce that’s been in place for almost two weeks.

Zamir’s comments came amid a reported push from Jerusalem to get the US to limit its historic direct talks with the Lebanese government to a two-week timeframe, and to sign off on a large-scale IDF campaign against Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese terror group, if the talks fail.

The US-mediated ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, which started on April 17, was extended on April 24 for an additional three weeks, US President Donald Trump announced at the time. His announcement came as Israeli and Lebanese diplomats met for US-brokered talks.

But cross-border fighting has continued. Speaking in the southern Lebanese town of Taybeh, one of the border villages where Israeli troops are deployed, Zamir said that the IDF “will not tolerate” Hezbollah’s attacks, while adding that Israel will not leave the security buffer zone it holds in south Lebanon until the threat to Israel’s northern communities is removed.

“In Lebanon, the mission assigned to us by the political echelon is to position ourselves along the line to prevent direct fire on the communities. We have achieved this; this is the line we are on. We may be required to remain on it,” Zamir said.

“We will not tolerate attacks and fire on our communities, and we will not leave until long-term security for the northern communities is ensured,” he said, according to remarks published by the IDF.

The IDF is continuing to fight, the chief of staff added, saying that the military is “working to deepen the operational achievements and to protect our forces.”

“On the combat front, there is no ceasefire; you continue to fight, to remove direct and indirect threats from the northern communities, to thwart terror infrastructure, to locate and kill terrorists,” he continued.

“Any threat, anywhere, to our communities or our forces, including beyond the Yellow Line and north of the Litani [River], will be removed. Your mission and duty are to act with freedom of action and remove any threat,” Zamir said.

“At this stage we are not advancing beyond the line, but we will continue to act and remove threats freely,” he added, saying there “is no restriction on [destroying] infrastructure and killing terrorists.”

During Zamir’s visit, the IDF continued its operations in southern Lebanon, saying that it struck some 20 Hezbollah sites with airstrikes and artillery shelling in the southern Lebanon towns of Baraashit and Shaqra on Wednesday morning.

The sites hit by the Israeli Air Force and the artillery regiment of the 91st “Galilee” Regional Division included weapon depots and other buildings used by Hezbollah for “military purposes,” the IDF said.

“The Hezbollah terror organization used these infrastructures to advance and carry out terror attack plans against IDF troops and Israeli civilians,” the military added.

The IDF said it also struck and destroyed a Hezbollah rocket launcher, and shot down two explosive drones that the terror group launched at Israel.

Hezbollah launched several more explosive-laden first-person view (FPV) drones at Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, in two separate incidents Wednesday, the army said. The drones exploded near the forces, but did not cause any injuries.

Trump said to rebuff Israeli efforts to renew fight

According to a Wednesday report on Channel 12, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a phone call with Trump, during which the Israeli premier asked for further freedom of action in Lebanon and for a two-week time limit on the peace talks with Beirut.

Israel has argued that Hezbollah attacks on Israeli soldiers and communities in Israel’s north are making an agreement extremely unlikely, while Israel’s deterrence in the area is eroding as it holds off from a major response to the rocket fire.

If no deal is reached by mid-May, according to the report, Israel wants Trump’s blessing to launch the expanded campaign in Lebanon that it had been planning.

However, Trump insisted that Israel “restrain itself,” the outlet added, citing an unnamed Israeli source. The president reportedly urged Netanyahu not to “take actions that could jeopardize the ceasefire.”

The report said that Israel is also pushing for the Lebanese military to take more concrete action against the Iran-backed terror group, but the source cautioned:  “The situation is very complex and it is difficult to see Hezbollah being restrained by the weak Lebanese army.”

Netanyahu updated his limited security cabinet during a meeting on Wednesday, at which he said that Trump still views the ceasefires in Iran and Lebanon as linked, and he does not want Israel to restart the war before he feels that talks with Tehran have been exhausted, the source told Channel 12.

According to the report, Israel estimates that, even if the negotiations with Lebanon progress, the continued Hezbollah fire in the north could still continue for a while longer.

Sa’ar: Hezbollah continuing to ‘drag Lebanon into this war’

Regarding the talks with Beirut, Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun said Wednesday that he is waiting for the White House to set a date for the next round of direct negotiations with Israel.

The only path for Israel to achieve security is through negotiations, Aoun said, but it must abide by the ceasefire.

“If Israel believes that through its violations and the destruction of border villages, it can achieve security,” he said, “then it is mistaken, because it has tried that before and it did not lead to any result.”

Speaking to Saudi Arabian state-owned Al Arabiya English, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar accused Hezbollah of continuing to “drag Lebanon into this war,” warning that Israel will keep responding to attacks from across the border.

Israel supports the ceasefire, Sa’ar said, but will not hesitate to act when its northern communities or IDF troops in southern Lebanon are targeted, saying: “When they attack… we need to respond.”

He stressed that Israel has “no territorial ambitions in Lebanon,” describing Hezbollah as “a mutual problem for us and for the Lebanese.”

Israel will have “no problem to withdraw” once the group is dismantled alongside other armed factions, Sa’ar said.

“We must do today what the army of Lebanon should have done a long time ago,” he added.

1 million Lebanese said to soon face food insecurity

Amid the fighting, a global hunger monitor on Wednesday warned that more than 1 million people in Lebanon are expected to face a food insecurity crisis in the months ahead as a result of renewed conflict and mass displacement.

A new analysis by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has found that 1.24 million people will be unable to consistently meet basic food needs and will be forced to reduce the quality and quantity of foods consumed, or resort to harmful coping strategies to survive.

“These results underscore the severity of the current situation in Lebanon, where conflict intersects with economic pressures putting national food security under critical risk and juncture,” said Nora Ourabah Haddad, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ representative in Lebanon.

The nearly two-month war has displaced more than 1.2 million people in Lebanon, with many heads of households out of work and relying on donations to survive as the regional conflict drives up food prices.

The IPC said Lebanon’s agricultural sector, once a critical source of food and income, has suffered from damage to farmland, displacement of farmers and rising input costs.

More than 76 percent of south Lebanon’s farmers have been displaced and 22% of all agricultural land damaged in the latest bout of fighting, according to Lebanon’s agriculture ministry.

It remains unclear how many will be able to return.

“[After] a war like this war, the agriculture sector would need years and years of rehabilitation,” Lebanese Agriculture Minister Nizar Hani told Reuters.

He said the sector had not yet fully recovered from the 2023-2024 war sparked by Hezbollah in the wake of the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. He said that conflict hiked the costs of diesel on which most farmers rely for their equipment.

The previous war cost the country’s agricultural sector $586 million in losses and destroyed nearly 5,000 hectares of forest cover, according to Lebanon’s National Council for Scientific Research.

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