Israeli war cabinet agrees to ceasefire with Lebanese Hezbollah | Conflict in the Middle East

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet agreed to a ceasefire with Lebanese Hezbollah on Tuesday, according to Israeli television.

The agreement, which will be subject to a vote by the Israeli government in the evening, would come into force on Wednesday.

If approved, it will end more than a year of cross-border hostilities and two months of open war in Lebanon.

The United States, the European Union, the United Nations and the G7 have all pushed for a cessation of hostilities between Israel and the powerful Lebanese armed outfit backed by Iran.

Netanyahu warned, however, that his country will retaliate if Hezbollah violates the agreement. The duration of the ceasefire depends on what happens in Lebanonhe said.

He added that this agreement will allow Israel to focus on the Iranian threat.

He was speaking at the end of a day marked by the most violent Israeli raids on Beirut since Israel launched a massive bombing campaign on September 23 targeting pro-Iranian Hezbollah in the neighboring country.

A ceasefire should also help put an end to the conflict in Gaza, American Secretary of State Antony Blinken said before the announcement of the agreement.

The G7 foreign ministers called on Tuesday for a immediate ceasefirewhile the head of diplomacy of the European Union, Josep Borrell, declared that the Israeli government had not plus d’excuses to refuse it.

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 implementation, Axios added, specifying that the United States would have given assurances of its support for Israeli military action in the event of hostile acts by Hezbollah.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Tuesday that his country would act with force in case of violation of the agreement.

International mediation was based on UN Security Council Resolution 1701.HIM which ended the previous war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, and stipulates that only the Lebanese army and peacekeepers can be deployed to Lebanon’s southern border.

Bombings in Beirut

Before giving the green light, Israel increased its aerial bombardments on Tuesday in the very center of the Lebanese capital – where at least ten people were killed according to the Lebanese authorities – and its southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, after calls to evacuate.

A Hezbollah MP, Amin Cherri, accused Israel of wanting take revenge on the Lebanese before a ceasefire.

The Israeli army reported in the afternoon more than 20 projectiles fired from Lebanon against Israel. She also reported strikes in southern Lebanon and a ground operation in the Litani River regionto the north of which Israel says it wants to push back Hezbollah.

The war that has raged since October 2023 in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas has spread to Lebanon after a year of exchanges of fire on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border.

Israel claims to want to neutralize Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, which opened a front against it on October 8, 2023 in support of its ally Hamas, to allow the return of some 60,000 inhabitants of the north driven out by its fire.

According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, nearly 3,800 people have been killed in Lebanon since October 2023, most since last September. The hostilities have displaced some 900,000 people, according toHIM.

On the Israeli side, 82 soldiers and 47 civilians were killed in 13 months.

Hostilities continue in Gaza

The Israeli army continues its strikes on the besieged Gaza Strip, where at least 22 people were killed on Tuesday, according to Civil Defense, including 11 in 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 and the cold.

Winter is going to be horriblewarned Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), while Gazans have not had the most basic things for 13 months: no food, no water, no shelter.

The war was triggered 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 a count by theAFP based on official data, including hostages killed or died in captivity.

The Israeli offensive carried out in retaliation in Gaza left at least 44,249 dead, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas Ministry of Health, deemed reliable by theHIM.