By Riham Alkousaa and Ari Rabinovitch
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Diplomacy aimed at securing a ceasefire in Lebanon showed tentative signs of progress on Thursday as Israel pounded its northern neighbour including heavy airstrikes on the stronghold of armed group Hezbollah near Beirut.
Pressing its offensive against the Iran-backed group, Israel hit Beirut's Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs, carrying out intense attacks there for a third consecutive day.
Plumes of smoke rose over the suburbs known as Dahiyeh, where Israeli strikes destroyed five buildings, sources familiar with the damage said. “We say God help us," said Ayat, a 33-year-old Lebanese woman.
The Israeli military said its fighter jets targeted weapons warehouses, military headquarters and other Hezbollah sites.
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.
In a more 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.”
PROMISING SIGNS
Hopes have been buoyed before, notably late last month when Lebanon's prime minister expressed optimism a ceasefire could be reached before the end of October.
At that time, sources said it would entail an initial 60-day truce with Israel withdrawing forces from Lebanon in the first week. A permanent ceasefire would follow based on implementation of United Nations resolutions.
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".
The Biden administration is making a push for peace in the waning time before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.
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 Trump, who is expected to be strongly pro-Israel.
Months of U.S. efforts to broker a deal between Washington's ally Israel and Hezbollah have so far failed. Israel launched a stepped-up air and ground campaign in Lebanon in late September after nearly a year of cross-border clashes in parallel with the Gaza war.
In another potentially promising sign, a senior Lebanese official signalled 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.
Hochstein had been due to communicate this to the Israeli side and then send any remarks back to Beirut, Khalil said. "We are waiting, and God willing, soon there will be the draft that he has reached," he said.
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.
IMPLEMENTING UN RESOLUTION
He said Lebanon was ready to "precisely" implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended a 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
Its terms require Hezbollah to remove fighters and weapons from areas between the border and the Litani River, which runs about 30 km (around 20 miles) from Lebanon's southern border.
The U.S. and other powers say a ceasefire must be based on Resolution 1701.
After 2006, Israel complained Hezbollah fighters and weapons remained in the border are while Lebanon accused Israel of violating the resolution by sending warplanes into its airspace.
The United Nations would bolster its peacekeeping mission in Lebanon to support the Lebanese army during a truce but would not directly enforce a ceasefire, U.N. peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix said on Thursday.
Khalil said Lebanon had no objection to U.S. or French participation in overseeing ceasefire compliance.
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.
According to Lebanon's health ministry, Israeli attacks have killed at least 3,386 people through Wednesday since Oct. 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.