Aya cycles near the site of an Israeli airstrike in the town of Baalbek, Lebanon, on November 2. (Lorenzo Tugnoli for the Washington Post)

TEL AVIV, Israel — A close aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Donald Trump and Jared Kushner this week that Israel is rushing to advance a ceasefire deal in Lebanon, according to three current and former Israeli officials briefed of the meeting, with the The goal is to bring a quick victory to the president-elect on foreign policy.

Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s strategic affairs minister, made Mar-a-Lago the first stop on his U.S. tour on Sunday before heading to the White House to brief Biden administration officials on negotiations over the state of Lebanon, a sign of how quickly America’s political center of gravity has shifted following Trump’s election victory.

“It is understood that Israel would offer something to Trump… and that in January there will be an agreement on Lebanon,” an Israeli official said. Like the others In this article, the official spoke to The Washington Post on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations.

Dermer’s spokesperson told the Post he discussed a wide range of issues during his trip but did not elaborate. Netanyahu’s office and a Trump spokesperson declined to comment. Kushner’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump has said he wants to end wars in the Middle East, but he also asked Netanyahu in a call last month to “do the right thing” against Hezbollah and Hamas. It is unclear what impact, if any, the Lebanese proposal discussed at Mar-a-Lago would have on the impasse in ceasefire and hostage release negotiations in Gaza.

“Netanyahu has no loyalty to Biden and will focus entirely on favoring Trump,” said Frank Lowenstein, former special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations under President Barack Obama, who served during the transition to the first administration Trump. If 2016 is any indication, he added, “Trump will not hesitate to act as if he is already president when he sees an opportunity.”

Netanyahu said in a video statement on Sunday that he had spoken to Trump three times in recent days and that the two men saw “major opportunities ahead for Israel, including in advancing peace” – a striking statement after more than he year of devastating war in Gaza and six weeks after Israel expanded its military campaign against Hezbollah by sending ground troops into southern Lebanon.

The Israeli prime minister was preparing for a new era in Washington well before election day on November 5. Netanyahu had been in regular contact with Trump, according to the Israeli official, and Dermer with Kushner, who helped broker normalization deals between four Arab countries. and Israel during Trump’s first term and maintains personal and financial ties to the region.

Kushner is expected to play an advisory role in possible future negotiations on Israeli normalization with Saudi Arabia, even if he is not named to an official White House position, according to a former Trump official.

On Sunday, the Israeli official said, conversations at Trump’s Florida residence focused on an Israeli proposal for a ceasefire in Lebanon involving Western and Russian cooperation. An Israeli military official said plans were also being made to step up ground operations in Lebanon if the talks ultimately failed.

The terms of the evolving deal, according to Israeli officials, would require Hezbollah fighters to withdraw beyond the Litani River – the northern boundary of a UN-monitored buffer zone established after the 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Since October 2023, following attacks by Hamas on southern Israel, Lebanese militants have used the region as a base to rain thousands of rockets and missiles on Israel, killing 45 civilians and 31 soldiers and forcing some 60,000 people to leave their homes.

Nearly 900,000 people have been internally displaced by Israel’s growing military campaign in Lebanon. More than 3,300 people have been killed, according to the country’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters but says hundreds of women, children and rescue workers are among the dead. Hezbollah said about 500 of its fighters were killed before the Israeli ground operation began, when the group stopped releasing a public count. More than 40 Israeli soldiers have been killed in ground fighting since October 1, including six on Wednesday.

A source close to Hezbollah said the group would be ready to withdraw its fighters north of the Litani as part of a temporary ceasefire. The Israeli official said the Lebanese army would take control of the border area for an initial period of 60 days, supervised by the United States and Britain.

Lowenstein said Netanyahu could aim for a temporary deal with Biden still in power, leaving a final deal for which Trump could take credit.

“The only thing Netanyahu is more concerned about than Trump is his own domestic policies, and bringing Israeli civilians back to the north is a major goal that he may not want to wait for,” he said.

The outlines of the emerging deal are similar to previous rounds of negotiations and align with Trump’s expressed desire to end Israel’s multi-front war, but the plan has yet to be finalized. been officially submitted to Hezbollah, according to officials from both countries. . And the proposal calls for the Israeli military to be able to operate across the border in the event of violations – a failure for Lebanese officials.

“Is there any sane person who believes that we will accept a settlement or a solution that will serve the interests of Israel at the expense of the interests and sovereignty of Lebanon?” » declared Tuesday the President of the Lebanese Parliament, Nabih Berri. Berri, an ally of Hezbollah, served as an intermediary in the negotiations.

The person close to Hezbollah said that “the condition for the group’s progress remains clear: Israel must be prohibited from carrying out operations on Lebanese territory.”

But Netanyahu – who has been accused by his critics of prolonging and expanding the war for his own political survival after being widely blamed for the security failures of October 7 – appears to be betting that the political moment is ripe for a breakthrough.

“This was a deal Netanyahu was waiting to give to Trump,” said Israel Ziv, former head of the Israeli military’s operations directorate, who remains in contact with senior members of the security establishment . “But waiting had a price,” Ziv added, referring to Hezbollah, which has regained its footing in recent weeks and killed more Israeli soldiers in the south after a series of deadly blows to its senior leaders and network. communications.

After his meetings at Trump’s private club at Mar-a-Lago, Dermer met Monday and Tuesday with Biden officials in Washington, including Amos Hochstein, the president’s special envoy to Lebanon, according to a senior U.S. official.

The senior official noted that Netanyahu remains engaged with the administration on the ceasefire process in Lebanon. A second U.S. official said all work on a possible deal was still underway by Biden’s team and that progress had been made.

Netanyahu’s consultations with Trump before and after the election demonstrate how much he was banking on the vote results and how carefully he is calibrating his strategy for the new administration. But Ziv said the prime minister will have to weigh the “whims” of the president-elect — a notoriously unpredictable politician — and national security calculations, since “all his leverage is Trump.”

And there appears to be a new X-factor in Israel’s peace plan for Lebanon: Russia, a country whose ties to Trump complicated his first term. According to the Israeli official, the proposal calls on Moscow to prevent Hezbollah from rearming via Syrian land routes, which for years have been the main conduit for weapons from Iran, the militant group’s main patron.

Russian officials visited Israel on October 27 to discuss the plan, according to the Israeli official. Dermer made a secret trip to Russia last week for follow-up talks, Israeli and U.S. officials said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. The U.S. official said Russia would not be involved in implementing or overseeing a ceasefire agreement.

Regarding competing claims about Moscow’s involvement, Lowenstein said, “it’s possible that both are true: no role for the Russians now under Biden, but a significant role later when Trump takes power.”

Iran’s ally Russia has maintained a presence in Syria since intervening during the country’s civil war to support President Bashar al-Assad, working hand-in-hand with Hezbollah to brutally crush the armed uprising against him. government. Today, Israel appears to be counting on Russia to pressure the Syrian president into cutting Hezbollah’s supply lines. “Hezbollah is cornered,” said a person close to the group.

Israel believes that its enemy’s fighting force has been weakened to the point of reaching a compromise. If Hezbollah accepts the agreement, Ziv said, it would come into effect “very quickly, because it is expected that attempts to violate it will also be immediate.”

Along with Dermer’s diplomatic blitz, the IDF is preparing for a second phase of its ground operation, according to an Israeli military official, in case the talks fail. And in recent days, the Israeli Air Force has hit Lebanon with strikes.

“We have taken away Hezbollah’s ability to attack us” as it might have done before the war, the military official said. But there is always more to do, he added.

The IDF and Hezbollah have maintained that the battlefield remains the main front in negotiations. This is the only factor, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said on Monday, which can “change the political equations”.

Haidamous reported from Beirut and Hudson from Washington. Kareem Fahim and Mohamad El Chamaa in Beirut, Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv and Issac Arnsdorf in Washington contributed to this report.