The agreement, validated Tuesday evening by the Israeli government on the recommendation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was immediately confirmed by the American and French presidents, Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron. The latter affirmed in a joint declaration that their two countries would work with Israel and Lebanon “to ensure that this arrangement is fully implemented and enforced.”
The sixty-day truce, with a permanent vocation, “is a major victory for the White House, which has sought to finalize détente with Hezbollah in the final weeks of Biden's presidency”analyse Politico. “The agreement was reached after a series of negotiations in the Middle East last week” between American special envoy Amos Hochstein and Lebanese and Israeli officials, the site adds.
The ceasefire agreement “provides for a sixty-day transition period during which the Israeli army must withdraw from southern Lebanon, the Lebanese army deploy in areas near the border and Hezbollah move its heavy weapons north of the Litani River”details Axios.
If it holds, the truce “will end more than a year of violence, which began when Hezbollah began launching strikes against Israel on October 8, 2023, saying they would continue as long as Israel waged its war against the people of Gaza”observe Al-Jazeera.
“Isolate Hamas”
According to Lebanese authorities, more than 3,800 people have been killed in Lebanon since October 2023, most of them in the last two months. The hostilities have displaced some 900,000 people, according to the UN.
“Western diplomats and much of the Middle East hope that [la trêve] will mark a de-escalation of regional tensions after months of escalating violence that included the assassination of Hezbollah and Hamas leaders and a direct confrontation with Iran”REMARK The Times.
In the immediate future, “the agreement concluded makes it possible in particular to restore strength to Israel for its operations in Gaza”note Time. “It is a safe bet that Netanyahu will have made promises on Gaza to the most extremist fringe of his government to alleviate his anger over the truce in Lebanon. The truce thus risks further aggravating, if possible, the fate of the Gazans, whose territory once again becomes Israel's last major front.judges the Swiss daily.
In fact, in a televised address, the Israeli Prime Minister “argued that a truce would allow Israel to replenish its weapons stocks, isolate Hamas, the Hezbollah ally that Israel is fighting in Gaza, and focus on the threat posed by the adversary regional of Israel, Iran”reports the New York Times.
“Diplomatic success” for Biden
Pour The Countrythe agreement also reflects “the weakness of Hezbollah, after the death of most of its leaders, including its most senior leader in decades, Hasan Nasrallah, and an undisclosed number of its militiamen, which Israel estimates at 3,000”. The Spanish daily also recalls that “Hundreds more are also out of action due to eye and hand injuries caused by the explosion” of their pagers, in September, in an operation hatched by the Mossad.
And the Islamist organization came under Israeli fire until the last minute, underlines The evening. While the parties finalized the ceasefire agreement, the IDF continued to strike “targets in Lebanon, including in the very heart of Beirut and elsewhere, with bombings considered among the most violent since the start of the campaign launched by Israel in Lebanon on September 23”specifies the Belgian title.
With the conclusion of this agreement, “America hands down takes first prize in the competition for achievement”comments L'Orient-Le Jour. “Powerless to keep Israeli fury against Gaza under control, Washington will have ended up making itself heard in Lebanon, even if it had enthusiastically supported the hunt for Hezbollah. Joe Biden can therefore boast of ending his faltering end of career with a notable diplomatic success”.
Truce in Gaza?
The outgoing president also hopes to continue his momentum. Ha’Artez notes that Joe Biden “took advantage of his statement” on Lebanon “to announce that his administration was poised to launch a new effort – with Turkey, Qatar and other regional partners – to reach an agreement to end the fighting in the Gaza Strip and secure the liberation Israeli hostages”.
More Axios hardly believes it. “If we follow the current trajectory, it appears that the Gaza crisis will continue under the Trump administration”estimates the site.
There remains the situation in Lebanon, which “has not yet emerged from the frighteningly surreal situation in which he has been struggling for over a year”deplores The Orient-The Day.
“The Council of Ministers will thus acquiesce today to a ceasefire putting an end to a war that it never declared, nor even desired. Worse still, this ceasefire, the State currently represented by the outgoing Prime Minister and the head of the legislature, did not truly, fully, sovereignly negotiate either”.
And the Lebanese title concludes: “However indisputably beneficial the end to the massacre is, it is far from resolving the Lebanese question”.
