Israel’s security cabinet is due to meet on Tuesday to decide on a ceasefire agreement with Lebanon after more than a year of fighting between Israeli forces and the Shia militia Hezbollah.
Under the deal being considered, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would reportedly withdraw entirely from southern Lebanon, Hezbollah would pull its heavy weapons north of the Litani River, about 16 miles (25km) north of the Israeli border, and the Lebanese army would move in to provide security in the border zone alongside an existing UN peacekeeping force, during an initial 60-day transition phase.
The White House national security spokesperson cautioned on Monday that the deal the Biden administration had been trying to broker for months had not yet been finalised.
“There’s still some process, things that I think that they’re working through,” John Kirby said. Calling the discussions so far constructive, he added: “We believe that the trajectory of this is going in a very positive direction. But nothing is done until everything is done. Nothing’s negotiated till everything is negotiated.”
Reuters quoted four senior Lebanese sources as saying they expected Joe Biden and French president Emmanuel Macron to announce the ceasefire imminently.
Hezbollah has not been a direct party to the talks, in which the Lebanese government has given assurances that the militia would abide by the terms of the deal.
Under the proposed ceasefire blueprint, the US would lead a five-country international monitoring committee that would act as a referee on infringements, and the US is reported to have offered guaranteed support for Israeli military operations over the border in the event that Hezbollah mounts an attack or reconstitutes its forces south of the Litani.
The conflict started on 8 October last year, when Hezbollah fired shells and missiles into Israeli border towns in solidarity with Hamas, and the fighting has intensified significantly since the end of September, when Israel launched a ground invasion amid intensified bombing across Lebanon, which has killed about 3,500 Lebanese people as well as much of Hezbollah’s leadership.
Israel carried out intensive airstrikes on Monday. The IDF said it had struck 25 command centres in Lebanon associated with Hezbollah’s executive council, the militia’s ruling body, including four targets in Dahiyeh, the largely Shia district of southern Beirut. Before the strikes the IDF sent out warnings on social media telling people to evacuate designated buildings in Dahiyeh, and the southern cities of Nabatieh and Tyre.
The UN peacekeeping force Unifil said it was “seriously concerned” by lethal strikes on the Lebanese army, which reported 19 soldiers killed. On Sunday, the IDF expressed regret for a strike on a Lebanese army position, which it said was a mistake, adding that Israeli operations were being “directed solely against Hezbollah”.
Sirens sounded across northern Israel in response to reports of Hezbollah rockets launched from Lebanon heading toward the Israeli border. Hezbollah fired more than 200 rockets into northern Israel on Sunday, one of the heaviest attacks since the start of the current conflict.
The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is under domestic political pressure to agree a deal that would allow about 60,000 Israelis from the border region to return home, after spending a year in displacement camps, and their safe return is Israel’s primary war aim in Lebanon.
Reacting to news of a possible ceasefire, the mayors of some northern Israeli towns decried it as a “surrender deal” as it would not involve the complete elimination of Hezbollah from the border zone and therefore failed to guarantee the safety of returning residents.
Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Mike Herzog, told Israeli army radio that a ceasefire could be reached within days.
Herzog said there remained points to finalise but added: “We are close to a deal.”
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, said on Monday that ceasefire talks were moving forward, but insisted that Israel would retain its capacity to strike southern Lebanon in any agreement. He confirmed that the issue would be discussed by Israel’s security cabinet in the next two days.
Lebanon’s deputy parliamentary speaker, Elias Bou Saab, told Reuters there were “no serious obstacles” to starting the implementation of the truce. Reuters also cited an unnamed Lebanese official and western diplomat as telling Lebanese officials that a ceasefire could be announced within hours.
The US news site Axios reported that a deal had been nearing completion last week but was delayed by the international criminal court decision to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant, and in particular France’s apparent indication on Thursday that it would fulfil its obligations as a state signatory to the court’s founding statute.
The immediate Israeli response was to oppose French membership of the five-nation monitoring committee envisaged by the ceasefire agreement, despite France’s historic ties and longstanding involvement in Lebanon. Israel reportedly dropped its opposition to French participation in the committee on Monday after Paris clarified its reaction to the court’s warrant, calling the question over whether France would arrest Netanyahu or Gallant if they visited its territory “legally complex”.
On Monday the Élysée said ceasefire negotiations had made significant progress and urged both sides to seize the opportunity.
The Biden administration has been working on a deal for several months, anxious to contain the spread of the Gaza war and eager to secure a diplomatic win in its last two months in office, before Donald Trump takes over. A US special envoy, Amos Hochstein, was in the region last week, seeking to finalise the agreement.
US Middle East envoy Brett McGurk will be in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to discuss using a potential Lebanon ceasefire as a catalyst for a deal ending hostilities in Gaza, the White House said on Monday.
The proposed agreement is closely modelled on a ceasefire deal that ended the last major Israeli war with Hezbollah in 2006, which also involved an Israeli and Hezbollah withdrawal from the zone between the Litani River and the border. It was never fully implemented.
