President Biden on Tuesday announced a cease-fire deal to stop the fighting between Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, raising hope that it could bring a lasting end to the deadliest war in Lebanon in decades.
Minutes earlier, the Israeli prime minister’s office announced that ministers had approved the cease-fire proposal. The fighting has displaced over a million Lebanese and tens of thousands of Israelis, killed more than 3,000 Lebanese and 100 Israelis and upended the regional balance of power.
Speaking in a televised address from the White House, Mr. Biden said the cease-fire would go into effect at 4 a.m. Wednesday in Israel and Lebanon. He said that the deal was intended to definitively end the war between the two sides, calling it “designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities.”
Hezbollah did not immediately comment on the announcement. Lebanon’s government — which does not control Hezbollah but plays an essential role in the deal — was set to meet on Wednesday morning to discuss the cease-fire agreement.
Israel’s security cabinet approved the U.S.-backed proposal late on Tuesday night after hours of deliberations, the Israeli government said in a statement. Shortly afterward, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, spoke with Mr. Biden to reiterate that Israel would crack down on “any threat to its security.”
In an address on Tuesday night to the Israeli public, Mr. Netanyahu sought to rebuff right-wing criticism at home over the decision to end the war with Hezbollah. He argued a truce was necessary to allow Israel to focus on the threat posed by its regional adversary, Iran, to isolate Hamas, and to replenish weapons stockpiles.
“We will respond forcefully to any violation” of the cease-fire by Hezbollah, Mr. Netanyahu said.
Under the agreement, Israel would gradually withdraw its remaining forces from Lebanon over the next 60 days, while Hezbollah would not be allowed to entrench itself near the Israeli border, Mr. Biden said.
“Civilians on both sides will be able to safely return to their communities and begin to rebuild their homes, their schools, their farms, their businesses and their very lives,” he said.
Mr. Biden said the Lebanese army and security forces would “deploy and take control over their own territory” again, and that the United States, France and other allies had pledged to ensure the deal worked.
“We’ve determined this conflict will not be just another cycle of violence,” he said.
In the hours before Israeli ministers approved the deal, the Israeli military launched one of its heaviest barrages of airstrikes since the war began, hitting the heart of Beirut and Hezbollah-dominated neighborhoods south of the city.
The cease-fire is officially an agreement among Israel, Lebanon and mediating countries including the United States. Nabih Berri, the speaker of Lebanon’s Parliament, has been acting as a liaison with Hezbollah, and any deal was expected to include the group’s unofficial approval.
Hezbollah has sustained blow after blow over the past few months, including the assassination of the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Israeli officials say they have achieved their goals in Lebanon and that they are ready to turn their focus squarely on the Gaza Strip, where the country’s military is still fighting a war of attrition against Hamas that began over a year ago.
But the deal would also break Hezbollah’s previous vow to continue fighting until Israel ends its war with Hamas in Gaza. Some right-wing Israelis have argued that a cease-fire now only sets the stage for another war with Hezbollah a few years down the line.
Israel and Hezbollah last fought a major war in 2006, a 34-day battle that killed more than 1,000 Lebanese and 150 Israelis before ending in an internationally backed cease-fire. For years, the two sides observed an uneasy truce, as both prepared for what they viewed as an inevitable major conflict.
Hezbollah began attacking Israel last October, after Hamas’s surprise assault on southern Israel, which killed about 1,200 people and set off the war in Gaza. Israel responded by repeatedly bombarding Lebanon and evacuating tens of thousands of Israeli civilians from border communities.
The volume of attacks on both sides slowly escalated. Then, over the past two months, Israel blew up thousands of pagers and radios belonging to Hezbollah operatives across Lebanon, killed Mr. Nasrallah and other leaders in massive airstrikes and launched a ground invasion to level structures that Israel said were used by Hezbollah.
While Hezbollah fighters have continued to fire thousands of missiles and drones at Israel, setting off air-raid sirens across the country, they have not inflicted anywhere near the casualties that Israeli forces have dealt the armed group.
Source: nytimes.com
