President Aoun rules out normalization with Israel

President Joseph Aoun ruled out Friday normalization between Lebanon and Israel, which still occupies parts of southern Lebanon.

Aoun's statement is the first official reaction to Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar's statement last week in which he expressed his country's interest in normalizing ties with Lebanon and Syria.

Aoun "distinguished between peace and normalization", according to a statement shared by the presidency.

"Peace is the lack of a state of war, and this is what matters to us in Lebanon at the moment. As for the issue of normalization, it is not currently part of Lebanese foreign policy," the president said in front of a delegation from an Arab think tank.

Lebanon and Syria have technically been in a state of war with Israel since 1948, with Damascus saying that talks of normalization were "premature".

A Lebanese official, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, told AFP that Aoun was referring to a return to the 1949 armistice between the two countries, signed after the first Arab-Israeli war.

The official said Lebanon "remains committed to the 2002 Arab peace initiative," which offers peace between Israel and Arab states in exchange for its withdrawal from territories it has occupied since 1967.

"No one, not the Americans or the Arabs, have raised to us normalization with Israel," they added.

The president called on Israel to withdraw from the five points near the border it still occupies. Israel was required to fully withdraw from southern Lebanon under a November ceasefire seeking to end its war with Hezbollah.

Aoun said that Israeli troops in Lebanon "obstruct the complete deployment of the army up to the internationally recognized borders".

According to the ceasefire agreement, Hezbollah must pull its fighters north of the Litani River, around 30 kilometers from the border with Israel, leaving the Lebanese army and U.N. peacekeepers as the only armed parties in the area.