France and the U.S. will work with Lebanon and Israel to maintain peace at their shared border.
Smoke rises from the site of Israeli airstrikes that targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs on Nov. 25, 2024, amid the war between Israel and Hezbollah. |
Israel and Lebanon agreed to a cease-fire on Tuesday, ending 14 months of fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.
The Israeli Cabinet approved the agreement late Tuesday following a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backing the deal.
The Israeli leader said that the cease-fire is needed to refocus attention on the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the threat posed by Iran.
“A good deal is a deal that is enforced, and we will enforce it,” Netanyahu said. “With God’s help, we will establish security, we will rehabilitate the north and continue, united, until victory.”
President Joe Biden said that he had spoken to both Netanyahu and Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati. Both Israel’s government and Lebanon’s government, which includes Hezbollah political representatives, have agreed to the deal, per Biden.
Biden hailed the cease-fire agreement — which was brokered by the U.S. and France — as a key step toward averting the outbreak of a wider regional war and eventually stabilizing the Middle East.
“Today’s announcement brings us closer to realizing the affirmative agenda that I’ve been pushing forward during my entire presidency, a vision for the future of Middle East, where it’s at peace and prosperous and integrated across borders,” Biden said, reiterating his commitment to a future “where Israelis and Palestinians enjoy equal measures of security, prosperity and yes, dignity.”
The deal is a major win for the White House, which has sought to finalize a détente with Hezbollah in the last weeks of Biden’s presidency. The agreement came together after a round of negotiations in the Middle East last week in which special envoy Amos Hochstein met with Lebanese and Israeli officials and urged them to agree to a deal. Before traveling to Israel, Hochstein had voiced optimism to reporters that a deal was progressing.
Biden described the cease-fire as a permanent cessation of fighting, starting at 4 a.m. Lebanon time on Wednesday. It also includes a 60-day implementation window during which the Lebanese army will deploy to the country’s south and Israeli troops will withdraw. No U.S. combat troops will be deployed to Lebanon, though he said the U.S. and France will in concert provide the Lebanese army with the “necessary assistance.”
A senior Biden administration official, who briefed reporters on condition that they not be named, added that Hezbollah will retreat north of the Litani River, a key demand of Israel. Under the terms of U.N. Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Lebanon War, Hezbollah was to retreat beyond the Litani River in southern Lebanon, but never did.
Hezbollah was cautious in a statement.
“We doubt Netanyahu’s commitment, who has accustomed us to deception, and we will not allow him to pass a trap through the agreement,” Mahmoud Qamati, the deputy head of Hezbollah’s political council, told a Hezbollah-operated television station in Lebanon. “We must analyze the points that Netanyahu agreed to before the government signing tomorrow.”
The Biden administration official clarified that Hezbollah is still bound by the terms of the cease-fire agreement, even if it does not agree entirely with the contours of the deal.
“We negotiate with the state of Lebanon. And the government of Lebanon has to take responsibility for what happens in Lebanon now,” the official said. “They are also in communication with both Hezbollah and with Iran, and the expectations are clear. So when this is reached, this cease-fire is reached, it represents all the entities.”
France and the United States will also join the “tripartite mechanism” created in the wake of the 2006 war. The official explained that the U.S. will work with both Lebanon and Israel to address complaints from either side.
The White House had increasingly seen a Lebanon cease-fire deal as integral to achieving a bigger diplomatic prize: a cease-fire between Israel and the militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. An agreement became all the more important as Israel and Iran traded airstrikes and attacks in October, as worries mounted that conflict between Israel and Iran and its proxies in the region could plunge the Middle East into a wider war.
But a cease-fire deal proved elusive for weeks, as Israel wanted to ensure it could deter further attacks from Hezbollah in the future.
Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah at the Israeli-Lebanese border began shortly after last year’s Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. But volleys of attacks between Israel and Hezbollah intensified in the fall of 2024, as Israel began conducting strikes against top Hezbollah officials, including the militant group’s then-leader Hassan Nasrallah. The mission of the military campaign, which also saw Israel launch “limited” ground incursions into Lebanon, was to reduce the militant group’s potency and establish further deterrence with Iran, one of Hezbollah’s principal backers.
In hitting Hezbollah positions in Lebanon, Israel regularly struck civilian infrastructure in the densely populated capital of Beirut. More than 3,000 civilians have died, per Lebanon’s health ministry. And hours before the cease-fire took effect, Israel launched one last volley of strikes against alleged Hezbollah targets in Beirut.
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