President Joe Biden, speaking from the Rose Garden on Tuesday, announced that Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to a ceasefire of their war that began more than 13 months ago.
“Under the deal reached today, effective at 4 a.m. tomorrow, local time, the fighting across the Lebanese Israeli border will end. Will end. This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities,” he said.
The deal, which is set to be implemented on Wednesday morning, would end the Israel-Hezbollah conflict after more than a year in which both sides exchanged thousands of cross-border fires. The two sides have been firing projectiles over the border for more than a year, though Israel escalated the conflict to get Hezbollah to stop the attacks indefinitely back in September.
“Hezbollah chose to attack us from there on the eighth of October,” Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised address. “A year has passed – this is no longer the same Hezbollah. We set it back decades. We eliminated Nasrallah, the axis of the axis. We eliminated all the senior members of the organization, we destroyed most of its missiles and rockets, we eliminated thousands of terrorists and we destroyed the underground and terrorist infrastructures near our border – infrastructures that were built over years.”
The proposed deal calls for a cessation of hostilities for 60-days, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon, and for Hezbollah to move their heavy weapons systems north of the Litani River, which would in effect, create a buffer zone separating Hezbollah and Israel.
With the implementation of this deal, it should allow tens of thousands, if not more, of civilians to return to their homes in the areas of northern Israel and southern Lebanon.
Israeli forces have assassinated the senior level leaders of Hezbollah in recent months, but Hezbollah’s ranks have still been able to carry out attacks on Israel and on Israeli forces. The ceasefire deal will allow the group to survive despite its devastated senior ranks.
Israel’s leaders have said they will resume attacks on Hezbollah if they break the deals of the ceasefire agreement. Netanyahu said they “maintain full military freedom to take action” in the event “Hezbollah violates the agreement and tries to arm itself.”
Biden affirmed that Israel has that “right.”
Netanyahu said there were three primary reasons for agreeing to the ceasefire deal now: first, to focus on Iran; secondly, to resupply troops and give them a break, and third, to further isolate Hamas.
The two sides last went to war nearly two decades ago, in 2006, and the war ended with the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which called for Israeli troops to withdraw from southern Lebanon, and for Hezbollah to move north of the Litani River. Hezbollah never complied with that requirement.
Israel is still at war with Hamas in Gaza, despite the assassination of several of the group’s senior leaders, including Yahya Sinwar, whom the Israelis said masterminded the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks. Hamas is still holding roughly 100 hostages, whom they have held against their will since the last October.
The U.S. was optimistic about getting a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas completed following Sinwar’s killing in mid-October, but it has not panned out. U.S. officials said Sinwar had been an impediment to getting a deal agreed upon, but his successors have shown little divergence from his positions.
Biden said the U.S. and others will make a new push to get an Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal done following the end of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was hopeful that getting this ceasefire completed could have positive impacts on the Israel-Hamas negotiations.
“I also think this can have a significant impact. Why is that? Because one of the things that Hamas has sought from day one is to get others in on the fight, to create multiple fronts, to make sure that Israel was having to fight in a whole series of different places,” he said on Tuesday. “And as long as it’s thought that that was possible, that’s one of the reasons it’s held back from doing what’s necessary to end the conflict. Now, if it sees that the cavalry is not on the way, that may incentivize it to do what it needs to do to end this conflict.”
Both Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran, which has funded and trained them for decades. Iran and Israel are dedicated enemies of one another, and Tehran has supported proxies in the region to carry out attacks on Israel.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Israel and Iran have engaged in espionage and assassination attempts, but rarely in a direct military confrontation. Iran carried out two massive missile barrage attacks against Israel this year, in both instances firing hundreds of projectiles at Israel, though in both instances the Israelis — with the help of allies — were able to intercept most of the rockets and missiles headed for Israel. Israeli forces have carried out limited retaliatory attacks on Tehran.
Hezbollah was widely viewed as Iran’s most sophisticated proxy force in the region.