Will the hope of a truce in Lebanon materialize? The United States and France suggest that an agreement is near, which could end the Israeli war in Lebanon and Hezbollah’s rocket attacks against the Jewish state.
According to a deputy close to Nabih Berri, the speaker of Parliament who is the chief negotiator on the Lebanese side, messages have been sent to Beirut and the announcement of the agreement is imminent. It would be based on the application of Resolution 1701, that is to say the UN text which ended the 2006 war between Hezbollah and the Israeli army.
>> Details from Laure Stéphan in Beirut, in La Matinale:
This agreement allowed a status quo for 18 years at the border, despite the violations. And it is this return to the UN text that Lebanon defended in the negotiations, by refusing the “freedom of action”, that is to say the possibility of carrying out one-off strikes, which Israel requests if it judges that Hezbollah does not respect the terms.
For Elias Bou Saab, number two in Parliament, the truce would last sixty days and the monitoring committee responsible for enforcing it, chaired by Washington, would include France, while Israel was hostile to the participation of Paris. The official is optimistic, while saying he fears an about-face from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Lebanese media display cautious optimism. The French-speaking daily L’Orient le Jour, in the camp opposed to Hezbollah, headlines that “the devil is in the details” and believes that the fate of the villages in the South, largely destroyed, and the return of the population, is not yet resolved.
The pro-Hezbollah newspaper Al-Ahbar, which until now accused the United States of playing hot and cold with leaks on an agreement, is for the first time more positive: it speaks of final decisive stages. As for the Lebanese, they are waiting to see to believe, after having lived through two months of war.
