The guns fell silent last night at 4 a.m., under the agreement reached earlier Tuesday evening between the Jewish state and the pro-Iranian movement.
A ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah came into force on Wednesday November 27 in Lebanon, after more than a year of cross-border hostilities and two months of open war between the Israeli army and the armed Lebanese movement supported by 'Iran. The truce, valid since 4:00 a.m. (3:00 a.m. in Paris), must interrupt the conflict which has forced tens of thousands of people in Israel and hundreds of thousands of others in Lebanon to flee their homes.
Iran, which supports Hezbollah financially and militarily, welcomed Wednesday “stopping the aggression” Israeli in Lebanon. Tehranwelcomes the news of an end to the aggression of the Zionist regime against Lebanon” et “firmly supports the government, the nation and the Lebanese resistance”indicated in a press release the spokesperson for Iranian diplomacy, Esmaïl Baghaï.
However, the Israeli army warned residents of southern Lebanon overnight not to approach its positions. “With the entry into force of the ceasefire agreement and based on its provisions, the IDF (the Israeli army, Editor’s note) remain deployed in their positions inside South Lebanon.said army spokesperson Avichay Adraee in a message on X. “You are prohibited from heading towards villages that the IDF has ordered to evacuate or towards IDF forces in the area”he added.
3,823 deaths in Lebanon since October 2023
The Israeli army now has 60 days to gradually withdraw from Lebanon, according to details provided by a senior American official on condition of anonymity, and Hezbollah must withdraw from the southern border with Israel. Before the final Israeli green light, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Tuesday that the duration of the ceasefire would depend “about what will happen in Lebanon”. “We maintain complete freedom of military action” in Lebanon, he added: “If Hezbollah violates the agreement and tries to rearm, we will attack”.
Before the truce came into force, the two parties had continued their military operations until the dead of night: Israel notably struck a building in the heart of Beirut on Wednesday, then ordered the evacuation of areas in the center and the suburbs of the Lebanese capital. For its part, Hezbollah said it had launched drones against “sensitive military targets” in Tel Aviv, Israel.
The pro-Iranian movement, claiming to act in support of Hamas, opened a front against Israel on October 8, 2023, the day after the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement in Israel which triggered the war in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli bombing campaign targeting the pro-Iranian movement in Lebanon finally began on September 23, 2024, and ground operations in the south of the country on September 30. According to Lebanese authorities, at least 3,823 people have been killed in Lebanon since October 2023, most of them in recent weeks. Hostilities have displaced some 900,000 people there, according to the UN. On the Israeli side, 82 soldiers and 47 civilians were killed in 13 months in clashes with Hezbollah, according to the authorities.
