Lebanese ceasefire efforts inch ahead as Israel keeps up fierce bombardment

Diplomacy aimed at securing a ceasefire in Lebanon showed tentative signs of progress on Thursday, as Israel pounded its northern neighbor with heavy air strikes.

Pressing ahead with its offensive against Hezbollah, Israel hit Beirut's Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs, carrying out intense attacks there for a third consecutive day.

In addition, Israeli strikes in the eastern city of Baalbek killed at least 20 people while 11 died in Israeli aerial bombardment of towns in southern Lebanon, authorities and Lebanon's National News Agency said.

According to Lebanon's Health Ministry, Israeli attacks have killed at least 3,386 people in the country through Wednesday since October 7, 2023.

Hezbollah attacks have killed about 100 civilians and soldiers in northern Israel, the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and southern Lebanon over the last year, according to Israel.

A World Bank report estimated the cost of physical damage and economic losses due to the conflict in Lebanon at $8.5 billion – a massive price for a country still suffering the effects of a financial collapse five years ago.

In a hopeful sign, the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon on Thursday submitted a draft truce proposal to Lebanon's parliament speaker Nabih Berri, two senior Lebanese political sources told Reuters, without providing details.

The draft was Washington's first written proposal to halt fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in at least several weeks, the sources said.

"It is a draft to get observations from the Lebanese side," one of the sources told Reuters. When asked about the proposal, a spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Beirut said, "Efforts to reach a diplomatic deal are ongoing."

In Israel, Eli Cohen, the country's energy minister and a member of its security cabinet, on Thursday said prospects for a ceasefire were the most promising since the conflict began.

He told Reuters: "I think we are at a point that we are closer to an arrangement than we have been since the start of the war."

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was rushing to advance a Lebanon ceasefire with the aim of delivering an early foreign policy win to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

In another potentially promising sign, a senior Lebanese official signaled that Hezbollah would pull its forces away from the Lebanese-Israeli border under a ceasefire.

The official, Ali Hassan Khalil, told Al Jazeera late on Wednesday that Lebanese negotiators had reached agreement on "a certain text" with White House envoy Amos Hochstein during his last visit to Beirut in late October.

A key sticking point for Israel, Cohen said, is ensuring it retains freedom to act should Hezbollah return to border areas. Khalil rejected this demand.

(With input from AFP)