Joe Biden
announces ceasefire deal to end fighting between Israel and Hezbollah
Benjamin
Netanyahu endorses imminent ceasefire with Lebanese group after cabinet
approval
Bethan
McKernan in Jerusalem and Andrew Roth in Washington
Tue 26 Nov
2024 22.22 CET
Joe Biden
has announced a highly anticipated ceasefire to end the fighting between Israel
and Hezbollah, in what he called a “historic” deal to end the 14-month-old war.
The Israeli
prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had endorsed an imminent ceasefire in the
country’s war with the Lebanese group after his full cabinet approved the deal
on Tuesday evening despite opposition from his far-right allies.
In televised
remarks after the Israeli security cabinet met to vote on the proposal for a
60-day ceasefire, Netanyahu said he was ready to implement the deal, but added
that Israel would retain “complete military freedom of action” in the event of
an infringement by Hezbollah.
“We will
enforce the agreement and respond forcefully to any violation. Together, we
will continue until victory,” Netanyahu said.
The French
president, Emmanuel Macron, who helped broker the ceasefire, was expected to
speak on Tuesday.
In remarks
from the White House Rose Garden, Biden said: “Under the deal reached today,
effective at 4am tomorrow, local time, the fighting across the Lebanese Israeli
border will end,”. He repeated the last two words: “Will end.”
“This is
designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities. What is left of Hezbollah
and other terrorist organizations will not be allowed, I emphasize, will not be
allowed to threaten the security of Israel again,” he said.
Biden said
that US troops would not be committed to the border between Israel and Lebanon,
but that “we, along with France and others, will provide the necessary
assistance to make sure this deal is implemented fully and effectively.”
The deal
follows months of international lobbying from the Biden administration, which
had launched desperate efforts to halt the fighting but regularly came up short
after promising that a deal was imminent.
The US is
expected to be a key security guarantor of the deal. The signing of a ceasefire
comes with less than two months left in the lame duck Biden administration,
meaning that the president-elect, Donald Trump, could continue to support or
upend the deal when he enters office on 20 January.
Netanyahu
said that there were three reasons to pursue a ceasefire: to focus on the
threat from Iran; replenish depleted arms supplies and rest tired reservists;
and to isolate Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that triggered war in the
region when it attacked Israel on 7 October last year.
Importantly
for Israel, Hezbollah dropped its demand that a ceasefire in Lebanon was
contingent on ending the fighting in Gaza.
Netanyahu
noted what he said was the group’s weakness after 13 months of fighting,
saying: “We have set [Hezbollah] back decades, eliminated … its top leaders,
destroyed most of its rockets and missiles, neutralised thousands of fighters,
and obliterated years of terror infrastructure near our border.”
The deal is
expected to go into force at 0200GMT Wednesday. Biden administration officials
said that negotiations had continued as late as Monday evening and that while
the discussions were “very constructive”, that “nothing is done until
everything is done. Nothing’s all negotiated till everything is negotiated.”
Israeli
television reported that the security cabinet had approved the proposal and
that it would be put to the wider cabinet later on Tuesday evening. Lebanon’s
prime minister, Najib Mikati, is also expected to give a statement later on
Tuesday.
The
far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wrote on social media that he
opposed the agreement, calling it a “historical mistake”. He said Israel “must
not trust anyone but ourselves” and predicted that it would soon lead to
renewed fighting with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
But he did
not threaten to withdraw from Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, indicating that the
Israeli prime minister may be able to contain any discontent on the right wing
of his ruling coalition.
The conflict
on the blue line – a demarcation line dividing Lebanon from Israel – escalated
in late September, when hundreds of Hezbollah pagers exploded in an attack
attributed to Israel. Israel then killed much of Hezbollah’s leadership in
airstrikes and launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon.
Under the
deal’s terms, Israel will withdraw entirely from southern Lebanon, while
Hezbollah will move its heavy weaponry north of the Litani River, about 16
miles (25km) north of the border.
During a
60-day transition phase, the Lebanese army will deploy to the buffer border
zone alongside the existing UN peacekeeping force. Longstanding border disputes
will be discussed after the 60-day withdrawal period.
The process
will be monitored by a US-led supervisory mechanism that will act as a referee
on infringements. A letter of assurance that was not formally part of the deal
reportedly guarantees US support for Israeli freedom of action if Hezbollah
attacks Israel again or moves its forces or weaponry south of the Litani.
The
agreement follows the contours of UN security council resolution 1701, which
ended the 36-day Israel-Hezbollah war of 2006 but was never fully implemented.
Even as the
deal was set to be announced, Israel stepped up its campaign of airstrikes
against the Lebanese capital of Beirut and other areas of the country, killing
18 people according to the country’s health authorities.
The deal
will not have any direct effect on the fighting in Gaza, where US efforts to
broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas have not led to a deal. The
negotiations over Tuesday’s ceasefire were reportedly facilitated by a decision
to decouple them from the Gaza talks, where the conflict remains intractable.
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