President Trump’s announcement on Thursday of a three-week extension to the cease-fire in Lebanon preserved a much-needed pause in a war that has killed nearly 2,500 people, displaced hundreds of thousands more, and destroyed homes, bridges and basic infrastructure.
The cease-fire has proved fragile. Though the large-scale Israeli bombing of recent weeks has halted, hostilities have simmered in persistent, lower-level violence between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
Neither Israel nor Lebanon, despite having engaged in rare diplomatic talks in Washington, has commented publicly on the cease-fire extension. Hezbollah, which was not directly involved in the U.S.-mediated talks, has signaled that it would reluctantly abide by the truce, so long as Israel does.
The continued violence and the grudging acceptance of terms, analysts say, suggest the deal falls short of a true cease-fire and is vulnerable to unraveling altogether.
“This is not so much a cease-fire as a limited de-escalation,” said David Wood, a senior Lebanon analyst at the International Crisis Group, a conflict-prevention research organization.
Under the terms of the truce, Israel has the right to act in self-defense, which it has cited as a justification for continuing to carry out strikes deep inside Lebanon. In recent days, its attacks have been concentrated in the south of Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold where the group has long exercised de facto control and enjoys broad support.
Israeli forces heavily bombarded the region during the war and now occupy a sizable stretch of territory there, where they are carrying out widespread demolitions.
Hezbollah, for its part, has continued attacks on Israeli forces and says it has downed Israeli reconnaissance drones. Senior political figures in Hezbollah have also dismissed the truce as meaningless, amid what they describe as Israel’s continuing escalation.
Lebanon’s cease-fire is deeply linked to broader tensions with Iran, Mr. Wood said, meaning that if the talks between Washington and Tehran were to break down, Lebanon could quickly become a flashpoint.
“One factor that makes the truce incredibly shaky is that it’s largely contingent on President Trump’s attention,” Mr. Wood said. “President Trump forced through this cease-fire largely because he didn’t want continued fighting in Lebanon to scupper negotiations with Iran.”
On Friday, Israel appeared to intensify its campaign, warning residents to evacuate the southern Lebanese town of Deir Aames before carrying out airstrikes. The town sits outside the six-mile-deep “forward defense line” that Israel said it would hold during the cease-fire, raising concerns that its operations were expanding.
The Israeli military said Hezbollah had fired rockets from the area a day earlier toward northern Israel.
Ali Fayyad, a senior lawmaker affiliated with Hezbollah, said in a statement on Friday that the three-week extension of the cease-fire did not hold “any meaning” because of continued Israeli attacks in Lebanon’s south. The statement was the group’s first public response to President Trump’s announcement of the extension on Thursday.
Mr. Fayyad criticized the agreement for “obliging the Lebanese side to adhere to the cease-fire, while imposing no obligations, even minimal ones, on the Israeli side.”
For many of those still displaced from southern Lebanon, the cease-fire, they say, has brought little tangible relief. Kamil Mohamed Mansour fled the village of Tallouseh after the war began and now lives in a tent at a stadium in Beirut after losing his home, savings and farmland.
“What cease-fire are you talking about?” Mr. Mansour, 78, asked on a recent afternoon. “I have lost everything and am sitting here alone.”
Abdi Latif Dahir is a Middle East correspondent for The Times, covering Lebanon and Syria. He is based in Beirut.
The post Lebanese Ask, ‘What Cease-Fire?’ as Violence Simmers in the South appeared first on New York Times.
