JERUSALEM — Israel and Lebanon agreed Wednesday to implement a ceasefire deal that’s missing one crucial party to the fighting raging in Lebanon: Hezbollah.
The powerful Iranian-backed militant group, which is not part of the Lebanese government and was not present at the talks held at the State Department in Washington, did not immediately respond to the deal’s announcement.
Israel and Hezbollah have continued to trade attacks since an initial ceasefire deal — which also did not include Hezbollah — was announced in April, and Lebanese health officials have said hundreds of people have been killed in that time.
Unlike the April ceasefire, the new agreement includes concrete steps calling for Hezbollah’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon and the introduction of Lebanese Armed Forces. Historically, the Lebanese army, which sometimes works alongside Hezbollah, has avoided taking measures that would displace the powerful militant group in south Lebanon or antagonize it.
The agreement reached by the Israeli and Lebanese governments and backed by the United States would require Hezbollah to cease firing on Israel and leave the south while the Lebanese military comes in to take full control of newly established “pilot zones” free of any non-state armed groups, like Hezbollah.
It’s uncertain whether Hezbollah — or Iran — will be satisfied by the emerging deal, which does not appear to require meaningful concessions from Israel. In a statement, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the deal gives Israel the freedom to continue firing and conducting operations on the ground in an area south of the Israeli-demarcated “Yellow Line,” and to strike Beirut, during the initial phase when Hezbollah is expected to withdraw north of the Litani River. The Lebanese population south of the Yellow Line, which runs about six miles from the border with Israel, will also not be allowed to return home after being displaced by Israeli evacuation orders, Katz clarified.
The broad latitude given to Israel in the agreement “is an expression of the reality we have created in Lebanon so far,” Katz said. “This is a reality that may lead, depending on developments on the ground and our continued uncompromising insistence on the interests of the State of Israel, to a political peace treaty with the state of Lebanon.”
In recent weeks, the fighting in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah has threatened to derail President Donald Trump’s efforts to secure a comprehensive peace deal with Iran, a sponsor of Hezbollah. Tehran has demanded that Israel stop its air and ground campaign in Lebanon, and this week Trump said in a podcast that he made an expletive-laced call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because he felt “perturbed” by Netanyahu “constantly fighting” Hezbollah.
Trump confirmed to the Pod Force One podcast on Wednesday that he had called Netanyahu “crazy” and waved him off an invasion of Beirut, but said the two of them maintained a healthy working relationship.
While Trump has been negotiating with Iran, Israel has occupied land equal to a fifth of Lebanon’s territory, displaced much of the civilian population there and threatened to invade Beirut to clear out Hezbollah strongholds. In some instances, the timing of Israeli attacks — such as its massive bombardment of Beirut that killed 357 people on April 8, one day after the U.S. and Iran announced their own ceasefire — appeared to be aimed at undermining Trump’s talks with Iran.
For its part, Iran did not immediately comment on the Israel-Lebanon deal. But its foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, reiterated on Wednesday the Iranian position that the two battlefronts — the U.S.-Iran war and the conflict in Lebanon — must be linked.
“If Israel attacks Beirut, the result will be the return to war,” Araghchi said in an interview with the Lebanese channel Al Mayadeen. “Either the war stops in both Iran and Lebanon, or it doesn’t stop neither in Iran nor in Lebanon.”
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