Mitchell Plitnick
Mondoweiss / November 28, 2024
Unpacking the ceasefire deal reached between Israel and Hezbollah and what it means for a potential regional war and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
One chapter in the long war Israel has waged throughout the Middle East is over. Lebanon and Israel agreed to a ceasefire that went into effect on Wednesday morning.
It’s been clear for several weeks that Israel and Hezbollah were both ready to take a break from the fighting. So what did the two sides agree to, how durable is the agreement, and what does it mean for a potential regional war and the ongoing genocide in Gaza?
What are the terms of the ceasefire ?
- The text of the ceasefire calls for the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel to stop immediately.
- Over the course of the next 60 days, Hezbollah will move all of its personnel and equipment north of the Litani River, some 18 miles from the border with Israel, and Israel’s forces will fully withdraw from Lebanon.
- Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon will be replaced by the Lebanese military, which will operate alongside the UNIFIL team.
- The Lebanese army will be responsible for ensuring that no weapons or military materiel reaches Hezbollah and that all of Hezbollah’s forces and equipment are dismantled or removed from the area south of the Litani River.
- Israel, Lebanon, the United States, and France will form a “Mechanism” group, which will work with UNIFIL to monitor and ensure enforcement of the commitments made by both sides.
- The U.S. and United Nations will facilitate negotiations between Israel and Lebanon to settle the remaining border disputes between the two countries.
What does the “side letter” from the U.S. to Israel mean ?
Alongside the ceasefire agreement, a letter from the United States to Israel affirms American support for Israel to “act in self-defense,” a term Israel has historically stretched beyond all recognition. This was the Joe Biden administration’s way of satisfying both Israel’s demand that it be allowed to act against Hezbollah if it felt the need and Lebanon’s refusal to compromise its own sovereignty in such an agreement.
The letter also commits the United States to provide Israel with intelligence on Iranian efforts to send weapons to Hezbollah or influence politics in Lebanon, and on any attempt by Hezbollah to “infiltrate” the Lebanese army.
Israel is to be permitted to act “in self-defense” if Hezbollah violates the ceasefire in the area south of the Litani, and can only act elsewhere in Lebanon if there is a violation that the Lebanese army is unable or unwilling to address. It also allows Israel to conduct reconnaissance flights over Lebanon as long as its aircraft don’t breach the sound barrier.
Lebanon and Hezbollah are not involved in the side letter, so they do not necessarily agree with its contents. Clearly, though, they are aware of it and were willing to agree to the ceasefire with the understanding that this is how the U.S. will approach any future Israeli decision on aggressive actions in Lebanon.
Why did Israel and Hezbollah agree to a ceasefire now?
For Hezbollah, Israeli attacks did significant damage to the group. The loss of key leaders, the loss of much of its firepower, and the damage to the group’s infrastructure were severe. While Hezbollah has been able to regroup sufficiently to beat back Israeli ground forces, the toll Israel has taken is significant.
More importantly, the damage that Israel has done to Lebanese civilians and civilian infrastructure is more than Hezbollah can tolerate. Lebanon was already reeling from economic and physical calamities over the past few years. Hezbollah itself has become a much more polarizing group within Lebanon. But even many who still admire the group’s ability to stand up against Israel’s military force are seeing too many of their children, their siblings, and their neighbours being killed.
Hezbollah cannot afford to simply allow that kind of civilian toll on the country. While people still blame Israel primarily for its crimes, Hezbollah’s status in Lebanon is going to crater if they are seen as stubbornly refusing a ceasefire when they can stop this devastation of Lebanese civilians.
On the Israeli side, neither Benjamin Netanyahu’s rivals nor allies in the Knesset are supporting him, but there is reason that the criticism is more political posturing than real attempts to pressure Netanyahu out of the ceasefire.
Netanyahu was faced with the reality that Israeli forces were being stretched too thin. With fighting in Gaza ongoing and Hezbollah’s ability to resist Israel’s advances on the ground proving resilient, there is a real strain on their military. Some reservists have been on duty for a year or more.
Perhaps more importantly, incoming U.S. President Donald Trump has made it clear to Netanyahu that he wants the fighting to end. Netanyahu has no intention of stopping the genocide in Gaza, but he has every incentive to stop the fighting in Lebanon, at least for a while.
Reports that Netanyahu was pushed into the agreement by a threat from Biden to support a UN Security Council resolution are nonsense. Not only is it highly unlikely that Biden would suddenly take such a step, but if he did the idea that Netanyahu would stop a war he wanted based on that threat is absurd. He would much more likely call Biden’s bluff and, even if Biden was serious, he’d simply defy the resolution, as Israel always has.
When Trump comes into the White House, Netanyahu can decide to try to strengthen the ceasefire sufficiently to return Israeli citizens to their homes in the north or to work with the many Iran hawks in Trump’s administration to provoke a potential war for regime change in the Islamic Republic, a path which would almost certainly mean renewed fighting in Lebanon. Either way, an opportunity to lower the strain on Israel’s military for a period of time will be advantageous.
Both sides are claiming victory. Is either right ?
As with any ceasefire, the question of winners and losers depends greatly on perspective. In this case, I would argue that both sides lost.
Hezbollah pledged to maintain solidarity with Hamas. They managed to do so for a year, but under the relentless onslaught from Israel, and the extensive killing of Lebanese civilians, it was eventually forced to allow the genocide in Gaza to be de-linked from the fighting in the north and pursue its own ceasefire deal.
Hezbollah lost much of its top leadership and many of its operatives. Its arms supply has been significantly diminished, and Israel’s operations in both Lebanon and Syria have made resupply from Iran considerably more difficult. Ultimately, it ended up agreeing to a ceasefire that, whether directly in its text or indirectly in the side letter from the U.S. to Israel, was basically on Israel’s terms.
Hezbollah once again proved that despite all of the devastation and slaughter that Israel brought to bear, it can not only survive but still prevent an Israeli ground invasion. On that basis, they can claim victory if they want. But it’s hard to make that case if we really look at the overall balance of outcomes.
Israel, too, is claiming victory, but a realistic look throws that claim into doubt. Ultimately, for all the blood it spilled and all the infrastructure it destroyed, Hezbollah is still standing. It’s damaged, but will likely recover from that damage.
Netanyahu can talk about bringing Israelis back to their homes in the north, but many will rightly doubt that it’s really safe for them to go back.
As much as Israel got its way in the terms of the ceasefire, they are still aware that the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) are no better equipped today to enforce the deal on Hezbollah than they were before. The LAF still needs to be very cautious about engaging Hezbollah, as any encounter of that kind risks a quick march down the road back to civil war. Additionally, many of the LAF are going to be sympathetic to Hezbollah or, at the very least, queasy about fighting fellow Lebanese in defense of an agreement with Israel.
By agreeing to the ceasefire, Israel is veering away, at least for the moment, from its efforts to compromise Iran’s position in the region and provoke a confrontation that settles the cold conflict between the two states that has been simmering for decades. That could change in the coming months, but for now, this is at least a pause in that effort, perhaps even a step back.
One more loser is worth mentioning, and that is international law. France was eager to be part of this process, as it often is when Lebanon, its former mandatory territory, is involved. Israel, angry that France has taken the position that it would obey the ruling of the International Criminal Court that issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, opposed French involvement.
To convince Israel to allow France to participate in the monitoring process, French authorities said that Netanyahu would be “immune” from French enforcement of the ICC warrant. This transactional approach to law is a major blow to the gains international law made with the ICC warrants.
Was there a Trump influence?
Donald Trump communicated clearly to Netanyahu that he wanted the fighting to end before he took office. He doesn’t want to inherit Joe Biden’s mess, and he wants to enhance the illusion that he brings peace while the Democrats bring war.
Netanyahu won’t end the genocide in Gaza. It is clear that Israel is digging in for a long operation there. The fighting with Hezbollah can be stopped, at least for a while, and that will have some benefits for Israel as well.
But as much as Trump might talk about being against a war in the Middle East, his picks for senior staff reflect a very different agenda. His Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee is a Christian Zionist who yearns to see the Third Temple built on the ruins of al-Aqsa Mosque and believes there is “no such thing as a Palestinian.”
His Secretary of Defense nominee, Pete Hegseth, sports a Jerusalem Cross tattoo, a symbol of the Crusaders and Christian nationalism, and was enough of a concern that, when he was in the National Guard in 2021, he was barred from providing security at Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Major Iran hawks such as Mike Waltz and Marco Rubio, as well as Islamophobic ideologues like Seb Gorka are also key figures on Trump’s team.
With this lineup, there is every reason for Netanyahu to believe that he will be able to manipulate circumstances toward the large-scale attack on Iran that he has wanted for decades.
Trump is also going to be sympathetic to the Gulf Arab monarchies, and they are working very hard to avoid that outcome. The Saudis, Emiratis, and Qataris will be able to incentivize Trump with business interests and massive arms purchases, whereas Netanyahu has, at times, fallen out of favor with Trump. These factors give some reason for hope.
But Netanyahu knows Washington better than the Arab leaders and will have far more sway over members of Trump’s team. It will remain to be seen which of those influences prove the more powerful.
But at least for the first few months of Trump’s term, it seems likely that the ceasefire with Lebanon should hold. Given the amount of blood spilled in Lebanon since September, any such respite has to be welcomed.
Mitchell Plitnick is the president of ReThinking Foreign Policy; he is the co-author, with Marc Lamont Hill, of Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/11/inside-the-israel-hezbollah-ceasefire/
