With a tone that is more harsh than optimistic, the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, signed a ceasefire agreement with Lebanon whose duration, he has warned, will depend on “what happens” in the neighboring country, because he will not hesitate to act “with force in the face of any violation” by Hezbollah. In a televised appearance and with undisguised pride, Netanyahu celebrated that the agreement unlinks the Gaza and Lebanon fronts (“Hamas has been left alone in the fight and that will help our sacred mission of returning the hostages home”) and will allow it focus on its main enemy, Iran. It will also unlock the scarce deliveries of weapons that, it has assured, its great ally, the United States, was holding back. Washington and Paris will act as guarantors. After a night of bombing, it came into force at 04:00 this Wednesday, Lebanon time (03:00, in mainland Spain).
The truce puts an end to eleven months of low-intensity war with Hezbollah and, above all, the last two and a half of open war that has left almost 3,800 dead in Lebanon, and the Lebanese militia party weakened and beheaded. Some 90,000 Israelis will also be able to return to their homes. The Israeli army takes advantage of the last moments to bomb Beirut with unusual violence, including areas of the center that had never been among the targets. These are hours marked by fear, with a crowd taking refuge from the bombings in a hospital, traffic jams to flee and ambulances trying to make their way between vehicles.
Ed Ram (Getty Images)
The agreement consists of a 60-day truce designed to become permanent. The Israeli army will remain during this period in the south of the country, where it has been advancing since October, demolishing entire villages and reached the Litani River this Tuesday, about 30 kilometers from the border. It is the first time since 2000, when they withdrew after 18 years of occupation of southern Lebanon. Hezbollah will have to withdraw its militiamen and weapons north of this river.
During those 60 days, Israeli soldiers will progressively leave, making way for the deployment of 5,000 soldiers from the Lebanese Armed Forces to ensure compliance with their part of UN resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war with them. contenders. They will be, along with the country’s security forces and the troops of the United Nations mission, Unifil, the only ones authorized to carry weapons or deploy south of the Litani.
The Lebanese Government will also supervise the sale, delivery and production of weapons and will dismantle all unauthorized facilities linked to the production of weapons and related material, according to the points of the agreement, published by the Lebanese newspaper. The Orient Le Jour. Netanyahu’s distrust of the Executive’s ability to fulfill it and of the mission of blue helmets has forced the inclusion of a novel element: the creation of a committee, with the approval of the Israeli authorities, that will supervise the application of the commitments. It will foreseeably be led by the United States.
The Israeli security cabinet was quick to approve the agreement in the meeting that began at 5:00 p.m. local time (4:00 p.m. Spanish peninsular time). Netanyahu has explained that he will take it before the Council of Ministers tonight. He has their support, that of the high command of the security forces and that of the reduced cabinet, so he has all the elements to move forward. Only three ministers and mayors from the north of the country are opposed, in principle,
The agreement reflects the weakness of Hezbollah, after the death of most of its leaders, including the top leader for decades, Hasan Nasrallah, and an undisclosed number of its militiamen, which Israel estimates at 3,000. Hundreds of others are also out of combat due to the injuries to their eyes and hands caused by the Mossad’s detonation, in September, of the beepers that Hezbollah had given them, no matter how much the group has tried to put it into perspective, spreading this Tuesday a video in which several people handle rockets and ammunition. Its title: “Despite the wounds, we continue on the ground.”
The main proof of fragility is that, as Netanyahu boasts, Hezbollah insisted for months that it would only stop its attacks when Israel stopped bombing Gaza and has ended up resigning itself to a separate ceasefire. Its fragility is also that of the country after five years of economic crisis from 12% in 2012 to 44% in 2022, the last year for which there is data.
On the Israeli side, it has not only weighed that the agreement leaves it in a position of strength. Also the need to give rest to its professional soldiers and reservists, called up up to three times and whose motivation has suffered. At the beginning of the month, Defense sources cited by local media placed their response rate between 75% and 85%, compared to 100% after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 (and 150% in some units, ). As the Israeli commentator Ben Caspit pointed out this Tuesday in the newspaper Maarivfor Israel, things could only “get worse from now on” on the Lebanese front.
Before things get worse, those same soldiers are launching one last violent attack. In just a few minutes, the aircraft bombed 20 targets in Dahiye, the southern suburb of Beirut. Then it demolished a building in the center of the capital (where surveillance drones have sounded louder than ever during the day) without prior evacuation warning and attacked for the first time the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidiya, near the city of Tire. . Emergency services have reported dozens of deaths. The army also issued an unprecedented warning to all “inhabitants of Lebanon” that it is preparing to attack “numerous branches of Al Qard al Hassan”, Hezbollah’s microcredit network.
The latest orders, published by the Israeli army’s Arabic-language spokesman, Avichai Adree, extend to four buildings in areas of central Beirut so far untouched by the attacks. This is the case of Ras Beirut, next to a gas station and a church; or Mazraa and Zokak el-Blat, a few meters from two schools. Some house Shiites displaced by the war. Hezbollah has maintained a much more contained profile during the day, although in the afternoon it launched a dozen projectiles against the bay of Haifa, Israel’s third city, and the Galilee.
