“Peace is possible.” With a satisfaction that he made no effort to hide, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, has confirmed the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah that, under the mediation of Washington, will come into force at 4 a.m. this morning. Wednesday, Lebanese time, and that the idea is for the truce to become permanent. “We are determined that this conflict is not simply another cycle of violence and therefore the United States, with the full support of France and other allies, has promised to collaborate with Israel and Lebanon to ensure that the agreement is fully implemented,” he said. the American president, in the first great good news he can proclaim in almost fourteen months of conflict.
In parallel, a joint statement between the White House and the French presidency indicated that the ceasefire “will see the end of the fighting in Lebanon and will protect Israel from the threat posed by Hezbollah and the rest of the terrorist organizations operating from Lebanon. The truce will create the necessary conditions for the lasting restoration of peace and will allow residents on both sides of the Blue Line to return to their homes in complete safety,” which demarcates the unofficial border between the two countries.
The United States hopes that the agreement for Lebanon could be a first step towards also achieving a ceasefire in Gaza. Over the next few days, Biden has announced, the United States and the mediators Qatar and Egypt will launch a new round of negotiations on the Strip. Washington remains willing, the outgoing head of state has assured, to address talks with Saudi Arabia for a security pact, and “a credible route to establish a Palestinian state and the complete normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel that both wish to have.” .
For the White House, the agreement represents an important victory, when it has less than two months left to hand over the keys to President-elect Donald Trump. For Biden it is a vindication and a boost to his legacy, after all his previous attempts to achieve a ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza crashed again and again against various objections and the desire expressed by the Government of the Israeli Prime Minister. , Benjamin Netanyahu, to achieve “total victory.” The failure to achieve a truce in the Strip has haunted him during his last year in office and may well have cost the Democratic Party the elections.
American diplomacy, concerned that the Lebanese front would end up involving Iran in the conflict, had intensified its efforts for a truce in recent weeks. If during the G-20 summit in Brazil the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, met with the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the American mediator in the conflict, Amos Hochstein, traveled to Lebanon to put pressure on the conversations.
Those negotiations hit a snag last week, after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli Prime Minister flew into a rage, jeopardizing progress in the negotiations. France, which Lebanon wanted as one of the countries on the agreement’s monitoring committee, declared that it would implement the court’s order. Biden himself spoke with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, on Friday, to redirect the process. The official White House statement on that dialogue mentions that both leaders addressed “efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement in Lebanon that allows residents on both sides of the blue line to return to their homes safely.”
Among its cards to pressure Netanyahu’s government, the United States appears to have played the threat of not vetoing a UN resolution that would impose a ceasefire under conditions detrimental to Israel. The middle Axios reported this weekend that Hochstein had given an ultimatum to the allied country to accept the pact or he would withdraw as mediator.
The agreement, which had been in the works for days, provides that during this first phase Israeli troops will continue on the Lebanese side of the border but will gradually return to their country. Its adversary, the battered Shiite militia Hezbollah, should withdraw north of the Litani River, thirty kilometers from the border. After those sixty days, if everything goes as planned in the text, thousands of soldiers from the Lebanese forces will be deployed in the border area to guarantee compliance with UN resolution 1701, which also stopped the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. .
The pact has been formally closed indirectly between Israel and Lebanon, two neighbors that lack diplomatic relations, under the mediation of the United States. In practice, this is an agreement between Israel and the Hezbollah militia, since the Lebanese Armed Forces have sought to stay out of the conflict during the thirteen months of hostilities that Israel turned into open war in September by bombing Lebanon and entering with its troops in that country on October 1.
The last obstacle was related to the agreement monitoring committee. It will be led by the United States, Israel’s great ally and mediator in the negotiation, and four other countries will be part of it. A letter of guarantees that is not included in the formal agreement grants Washington’s support for Israel’s actions if Hezbollah attacks the north of that country again or moves forces south of Litani.
Israel maintained its bombing until the last minute. This same Tuesday, it attacked neighborhoods again in the center of Beirut and in the south of the Lebanese capital.
While the Israeli Government met to vote on the agreement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken closed his participation in the G-7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Italy with a press conference in which he assured that the agreement, then still in its infancy, “will make a big difference in saving lives and livelihoods in Lebanon and Israel. “It will make a big difference in creating the conditions that will allow people to return home safely in northern Israel and southern Lebanon.”
“I also believe that de-escalating tensions in the region can help us end the conflict in Gaza in particular,” added the head of US diplomacy. The radical Palestinian militia Hamas “will know that it cannot count on other fronts opening in the war.”
Washington had remained cautious until the last moment. On Monday, when senior Lebanese officials already indicated to the Reuters agency that the agreement was imminent, the spokesman for the White House National Security Council, John Kirby, limited himself to confirming that the negotiations were “close” to closing an agreement and The trajectory was “positive.” But he also clarified that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” he added.
