Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to a ceasefire in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah after months of bitter fighting.
The Israeli prime minister announced this evening that he will present his cabinet with the deal for approval after accepting its terms.
Netanyahu urged that the deal would allow families to return to northern Israel after months displaced by the conflict on the northern border.
Facing significant opposition from members of his cabinet, he stressed that the ceasefire would depend on ‘what happens’ in Lebanon.
He added that Israel would maintain ‘full freedom’ to act in Lebanon, and said a truce would allow Israel to ‘focus on the Iranian threat’.
The veteran Israeli prime minister spoke on Tuesday after weeks of discussions over a US-led deal mediated with Hezbollah by the government of Lebanon.
The agreement is understood to be based on UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the war between Hezbollah in Israel in 2006.
Netanyahu insisted late Tuesday that a deal would allow Israel to focus attention on Israel and ‘will intensify’ pressure on Hamas.
Israeli forces have been locked in intense clashes with Hezbollah since late September, escalating their campaign by land and air with a ground offensive into the south after nearly a year of cross-border exchanges.
Lebanese officials echoed support for a deal after months caught in the crossfire between Israeli forces and Hezbollah.
Prime Minister Najib Mikati demanded an ‘immediate’ implementation of the ceasefire as Israel continued to pound central Beirut’s Hamra district.
To date, the Lebanese health ministry estimates that at least 3,754 people have been killed in the country since October 2023, most of them since September.
American officials, leading the talks, also spoke optimistically of progress towards a deal tonight.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said today that efforts to secure a ceasefire in Lebanon were ‘in the final stages’.
He added that a deal could help end the Gaze conflict ‘by de-escalating tensions in the region’, despite Netanyahu’s comments.
Israel’s security cabinet convened to discuss a proposed ceasefire today as strikes continued to rock Beirut.
Blinken said that after months of ‘intensive diplomatic effort’ with partners including France, working with Lebanon and Israel, he hoped to reach a conclusion ‘very soon’.
‘It will make a big difference in saving lives and livelihoods in Lebanon and in Israel. It will make a big difference in creating the conditions that will allow people to return to their home safely in northern Israel and in southern Lebanon,’ he said.
Israel has sought to oust Hezbollah from its strongholds in southern Lebanon and the suburbs of Beirut with some 60,000 people displaced from northern Israel by the conflict.
In recent months, its military has killed nearly all of the group’s leaders. But international pressure mounts to de-escalate amid fears of the conflict spilling into a regional war.
The proposal under discussion to end the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah calls for an initial two-month ceasefire during which Israeli forces would withdraw from Lebanon and Hezbollah would end its armed presence along the southern border south of the Litani River.
The withdrawals would be accompanied by an influx of thousands more Lebanese army troops, who have been largely sidelined in the war, to patrol the border area along with an existing U.N. peacekeeping force.
The deal echoes the existing Resolution 1701, that critics say did little to keep Hezbollah at bay.
When Israel entered Lebanon earlier this year, it cited perceived inaction from the United Nations to keep Hezbollah from expanding beyond its agreed borders.
Hezbollah never ended its presence in southern Lebanon, while Lebanon says Israel regularly violated its airspace and occupied small patches of its territory.
But under the 2006 agreement, Israel was also not supposed to intervene directly to push Hezbollah back.
Netanyahu spoke tonight of a ‘paradigm shift in security for Israel’, and will hope to convince Israelis that the new deal will pave the way for a stronger resolution than 1701 that overcomes its shortcomings.
