The United States has spoken of a “close” agreement, while calling for caution, on a truce between Israel and the Lebanese Islamist movement supported by Iran, which entered into open war at the end of September after months of exchanges of shootings on the sidelines of the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip. But at a time when diplomatic pressure is intensifying, Israel on Tuesday increased airstrikes on the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, where it announced having bombed “20 terrorist targets” of Hezbollah, after calling on the population to evacuate. in so many neighborhoods.
A strike also hit a building housing displaced people in the heart of Beirut, killing at least three people according to the Lebanese authorities. The Israeli army claimed to have targeted around 30 targets in southern Lebanon, where it carried out a ground incursion into “the Litani River region”, the geographic boundary north of which Israel says it wants to push back Hezbollah. “A ring of fire envelops the suburbs” south of Beirut, reported the official Ani agency.
Meeting. A thick cloud of smoke covered these neighborhoods, according to AFP images, and explosions echoed in the capital, shortly before a meeting of the Israeli security cabinet which was underway in the afternoon to discuss an agreement of ceasefire. “There must be (…) a discussion, a decision. There could also be a vote,” announced Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel, without going into the details of the text.
Israel has “no excuse” to refuse a ceasefire, said Tuesday the head of diplomacy of the European Union, Josep Borrell. The UN has reiterated its call for a “permanent ceasefire” in Lebanon, Israel and Gaza. A ceasefire in Lebanon is “within reach”, according to Berlin. But Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Tuesday that his country would act “forcefully” if an agreement was violated.
The war that has been raging since October 2023 in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas has spread to Lebanon since September, after a year of exchanges of fire on both sides of the border between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, ally of the Palestinian Islamist movement. Tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced in the border regions of northern Israel and southern Lebanon.
60 day truce. According to the American news site Axios, the agreement is based on an American project providing for a 60-day truce during which Hezbollah and the Israeli army would withdraw from southern Lebanon to allow the Lebanese army to deploy there. It includes the establishment of an international committee to monitor its application, added Axios, specifying that the United States would have given assurances of its support for Israeli military action in the event of hostile acts by Hezbollah.
The mediation is based on UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the previous war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, and which stipulates that only the Lebanese army and peacekeepers can be deployed to the southern border of Lebanon. However, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said a ceasefire would be “a big mistake.” For Nahum Donita, a 60-year-old resident of Tel Aviv, “it is clear that Hezbollah cannot be trusted. But the Israeli government is not trustworthy either.”
Israel says it wants to neutralize Hezbollah in southern Lebanon to protect its own population. The Shiite movement, which has suffered very severe blows since September, has assured that it will fight Israel as long as the offensive in Gaza continues, while saying it is open to a cease-fire. According to the Health Ministry, nearly 3,800 people have been killed in Lebanon since October 2023, most since last September. On the Israeli side, 82 soldiers and 47 civilians were killed in 13 months.
Rain in Gaza. The Israeli army is also continuing its strikes on the besieged Gaza Strip, where at least 22 people were killed on Tuesday, according to Civil Defense, including 11 in the bombing of a school housing displaced people in the north. At the start of winter, thousands of displaced people are trying with paltry means to protect themselves from the rain. “We try as much as we can to prevent rainwater from seeping into the tents so that the children don’t get soaked,” says Ayman Siam, a father taking refuge in the Yarmouk camp in Gaza. town in the north.
The winter is going to be “horrible”, warned Louise Wateridge, an emergency manager at the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA). Gaza residents “have not had the most basic things for 13 months: no food, no water, no shelter. With the rain and the cold on top of all that…,” she explained to AFP.
Palestinians wait to receive a food ration in front of a distribution center near Gaza City, November 25, 2024 – Omar AL-QATTAA – Gaza (AFP)
The war was sparked by the unprecedented attack launched by Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,207 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on the data. official information, including hostages killed or died in captivity. The Israeli offensive carried out in retaliation in Gaza left at least 44,249 dead, the majority of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas Ministry of Health, deemed reliable by the UN.
Marc JOURDIER, with Layal ABOU RAHAL in Beirut
© Agence France-Presse
