Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced overnight that he is exerting efforts aimed at resolving the growing spat between President Michel Aoun and Speaker Nabih Berri.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri inspected overnight the preparations for New Year’s Eve celebrations at Nejmeh Square in downtown Beirut.

The army's leadership has reportedly “refused” to accept controversial decrees related to the promotion of army officers handed back to the defense ministry by the finance minister after he refused to sign them, asking said minister to provide “written answers” to the reasons and circumstances that justify the decision, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Saturday.

Lebanon's Cabinet is scheduled to hold its first meeting in 2018 on Thursday in light of an escalating row between President Michel Aoun and Speaker Nabih Berri over the signing of a decree promoting a number of Army officers and amid concerns that Berri's ministers might boycott the government session.

The Israeli army on Friday hurled stun grenades during a Hizbullah-organized demo near the Lebanese-Israeli border, Lebanon's National News Agency said.

“Israeli soldiers hurled two stun grenades this afternoon at a number of young men who approached the electronic border fence,” NNA said.

President Michel Aoun on Friday reassured that Lebanon's future “will be better than its past.”

“Lebanon's future will be better than its near and distant past, because we will build a state no matter how hard things may be,” Aoun told an expat delegation at the Baabda Palace.

Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil has sparked controversy in Lebanon by saying that he does not reject Israel's existence and that Israel “has the right to live in security.”

“We do not have an ideological problem with Israel. We do not reject Israel's existence and its right to live in security. We are only saying that we want all peoples to lives in security and to acknowledge each other,” Bassil said in an interview with the Beirut-based, pan-Arab al-Mayadeen television.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri reassured Thursday that “every crisis has a solution,” in reference to his spat with President Michel Aoun over a controversial decree.

“There is a Constitution, so let it be implemented, and every crisis has a solution,” Berri's visitors quoted him as saying.

Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil refused Wednesday to sign decrees for the promotion of some army officers, following a war of words between President Michel Aoun and Speaker Nabih Berri over a previous decree that granted one-year seniority to some officers.

The new decrees involve the promotion of a number of officers from the rank of colonel to the rank of brigadier general and others from lieutenant colonel to colonel.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Wednesday described his November resignation ordeal as “one of the bitterest crises” in his political life, while stressing that dialogue is the only possible approach in Lebanon.

“Four years have passed since the martyrdom of the brother and the comrade of the difficult days, (slain ex-minister Mohammed Shatah), and each year I was sensing the extent of the emptiness he has left. But this year I increasingly felt his absence and how much I needed his wit, wisdom and firmness during one of the bitterest crises in my political life,” said Hariri at a rally marking Shatah's fourth assassination anniversary.