Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said Israel was ready to back Lebanon's efforts to disarm Hezbollah and offered "a phased" pullout of its troops if Lebanon followed through with plans to seize the group's weapons.

"Israel stands ready to support Lebanon in its efforts to disarm Hezbollah and to work together towards a more secure and stable future for both nations," said Netanyahu, according to a statement released by his office.

The United Nations Security Council will vote Monday on the future of the blue helmet peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon that has faced U.S. and Israeli opposition.

The Council will vote on a French-drafted compromise that would keep the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), deployed in 1978 to separate Israel and Lebanon, in place for one more year while it prepares to withdraw.

U.S. envoy Tom Barrack arrived in Israel and met on Sunday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the Trump administration’s request that Israel restrain its strikes in Lebanon, as well as about the negotiations with Syria, three Israeli and U.S. sources told U.S. news portal Axios.

President Joseph Aoun has said that Lebanon is still awaiting “the final Israeli response” to the Lebanese paper that was carried to Israel by U.S. envoy Tom Barrack.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil said during an FPM dinner in the al-Zahrani region that “every martyr who fell” in the South “did not only fall in defense of the South, but rather entire Lebanon.”

On the eve of the visit to Speaker Nabih Berri by President Joseph Aoun’s adviser Andre Rahal, the head of Hezbollah’s Liaison and Coordination Unit Wafiq Safa visited the Baabda Palace along with Hezbollah official Ahmad Mhanna, ad-Diyar newspaper reported on Friday.

After their visit to Beirut, U.S. envoys Tom Barrack and Morgan Ortagus met in Paris with Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and the talks were not positive, seeing as Dermer categorically rejected adding Lebanon’s eight remarks to the U.S. paper, informed sources said.

The U.S. delegation then suggested that Israel make a goodwill gesture through releasing a number of Lebanese captives and withdrawing from one of the occupied points, but Dermer strongly rejected that and stressed that Israel wants “serious actions” from Lebanon and that it will carry on with its plans for the northern front, the sources told ad-Diyar newspaper in remarks published Friday.

President Joseph Aoun reassured Friday that the situation on the Lebanese-Syrian border is under control and that the Lebanese Army maintains “full readiness” there.

The army is “performing its missions competently and keenly, in order to spread calm and serenity among the people,” Aoun added, in a meeting with ex-MP Emile Rahme.

The release of Arab Israeli citizen Salah Abu Hussein by Lebanon on Thursday, after he spent around a year in Lebanese prisons, is part of “a course that will unfold in the coming days,” prominent sources told al-Akhbar newspaper in remarks published Friday.

The move is linked to “promises presented by U.S. envoy Tom Barrack about a step that the Israeli government will make in return for the (Lebanese) government’s decision to disarm the resistance (Hezbollah),” the sources said.

President Joseph Aoun’s adviser Brig. Gen. Andre Rahal met Friday in Beirut’s southern suburbs with MP Mohammad Raad, the head of Hezbollah’s Loyalty to Resistance bloc.