The ceasefire agreement reached between Israel and Lebanon on November 27 was a welcome development after 14 months of skirmishes between the Israeli Army and Hezbollah, tit-for-tat attacks, and devastating bombardment campaigns that destroyed areas near and far from the Lebanon-Israel border. Immediately following the signing of the accord, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese rushed back to their towns and villages in southern Lebanon, Beirut’s southern suburbs, and other districts of the country to inspect the damage to their homes and property. The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah displaced some 1.2 million people in Lebanon and about 60,000 Israelis who appear to be taking their time returning to their towns near the border ostensibly because they fear that they are still in danger.
Whether the ceasefire holds and Israel quickly withdraws from southern Lebanon within the two-month window stipulated in the agreement is anyone’s guess. But what is certain is that the Israeli Army violated the ceasefire from the beginning and continues to do so more than a week after it went into effect, with some 129 violations by December 4. Israel also violated the ceasefire on December 6 and 7, killing at least seven civilians. This means that all bets are off that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government could be trusted to see peace through in southern Lebanon. In fact, it appears that the Israeli military is interpreting the agreement as it wishes and contrary to the essence of the ceasefire, which relates to the cessation of hostilities by all combatants—Israeli forces as well as Hezbollah and its armed allies.
With the monitoring committee stipulated in the agreement not yet performing its mission of checking violations and forcing their suspension, the survival of the ceasefire is far from being a sure thing. Certainly, the committee may not be able to end the violations since no one would expect it to challenge the Israeli Army head on. Composed of American, French, Lebanese, and Israeli representatives, as well as the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the committee met with Lebanese Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, the committee’s interlocutor with Hezbollah, on December 5 in preparation for commencing its work. It is scheduled to begin its actual meetings on December 9, after which the full deployment of the Lebanese Army in southern Lebanon is supposed to begin.
Israeli forces are also preventing the residents of some 60 border villages from returning to their homes on the pretext that doing so would put them in danger. This is coming from a military that spent more than two months targeting residential neighborhoods and collapsing high-rises in Beirut and elsewhere with no worry about civilian casualties and the attendant horrors. It is not hard to surmise that since there supposedly is a cessation of hostilities near the border, the prohibition on a return to these villages hides another sinister motive: to maintain the region along the border as a no-man’s land, a buffer zone monitored or likely occupied by Israel inside Lebanon’s sovereign territory. Israel did that once before, when it established such a zone in 1978 after its first invasion of Lebanon that year, and which lasted until it withdrew from the country in 2000.
Violating the agreement, preventing civilians from returning to their homes, and delaying its withdrawal from Lebanon point to unwelcome possibilities regarding Israel’s respect for the ceasefire stipulations. Backed by a permissive Biden administration that did not raise much concern about its campaign against Hezbollah over the last 14 months. and encouraged by the arrival of a Trump administration stocked with virulent pro-Israel acolytes, the Israeli government has the ability to fashion the post ceasefire period as it wishes. Israel already operates as if the ceasefire does not prevent it from conducting offensive operations or maintaining overflights in Lebanese airspace, obvious triggers for reciprocity by Hezbollah—if it wants to retaliate—against Israeli targets inside the territory south of the Litani River or in Israel itself.
Netanyahu has already declared that he considers the ceasefire to be a formality that does not end the war with Hezbollah, a position that speaks volumes about what he has in store for the post-ceasefire period—that is, if it holds. But that period—which roughly coincides with US President-elect Donald Trump’s first weeks in office in 2025—promises to be markedly different from Israel’s prosecution of the war with Hezbollah so far. Israel’s new minister of defense, Israel Katz, has threatened that if the ceasefire breaks down—something his military has been diligently trying to achieve since the signing of the agreement—Israel will not differentiate between Hezbollah and the state of Lebanon. In the absence of a credible and effective mechanism to control Israeli actions in the next two months, the drumbeat of war against Lebanon will continue as the bleeding and killing in Gaza takes the lives of more innocent and helpless Palestinian civilians.
For Lebanon, the ceasefire was a very welcome development. Practically broke financially after a grueling five years of economic chaos and dysfunction and broken politically after hobbling along without a president for more than two years, the country needed a respite from brutal Israeli attacks. According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, at least 4,000 Lebanese were killed in Israeli attacks since October 2023 and close to 17,000 were injured, the majority since September 15, 2024. A November report by the World Bank put Lebanon’s losses in both physical damage and potential forfeited economic activity at some $8.5 billion, a figure that will likely increase. Almost 100,000 housing units were damaged or destroyed in Israel’s attacks in the south, the southern environs of Beirut, the Beqaa Valley in the east, and elsewhere.
Despite all, perhaps the silver lining for Lebanon today is the stipulation in the ceasefire agreement that the Lebanese Army should return to deploy en force in the south, along with UNIFIL, while Hezbollah—with whatever military assets it still controls—must withdraw to areas beyond the Litani River, some 28 kilometers to the north of the border with Israel. A firm and fully implemented ceasefire will allow the Lebanese government to appear in charge and making the fateful decisions affecting the country, not Hezbollah which has expropriated the constitutional authority’s power to speak on behalf of Lebanon. Indeed, the ceasefire and the Lebanese Army’s full and unhindered deployment in southern Lebanon with UNIFIL’s assistance are essential factors in assuring the return of the Lebanese state as the sole constituted authority that defends Lebanese sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Helping this is what can be readily described as the current calamity besetting Hezbollah following its open war with Israel. No unbiased and accurate information is yet available about the extent to which Hezbollah has been weakened militarily, but the war and the return to implementing United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 that ends the group’s role in the south has undoubtedly lessened its prowess and influence. Moreover, the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria—which used to ensure constant and largely uninterrupted Iranian military supplies to the party—is a strategic loss for Hezbollah that is unlikely to be reversed anytime soon. For all intents and purposes, Hezbollah has been deprived of its status as a strategic fighting force and a credible challenge to Israel’s military.
Under these circumstances, it is essential that Israel respect the ceasefire agreement and begin implementing its ancillary stipulations: fully stopping all hostilities and attacks, withdrawing from all Lebanese territory, and allowing the displaced to return to their homes and properties, among other things. Israel must not be allowed to interpret the agreement in a way that serves its expansionist policies at the expense of Lebanon. Violating the ceasefire only delays implementing its provisions and opens the possibility for far-right groups in Israel, such as Uri Tzafon, that claim that southern Lebanon is part of the northern Galilee, to start working on building colonial settlements in southern Lebanon. It is high time that the international community—and especially the Biden administration—force Israel to accept the full implementation of the ceasefire in southern Lebanon and around the entire country.
The views expressed in this publication are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
Featured image credit: Shutterstock/Ramiz Dallah
