Biden announces cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon

JERUSALEM – The Israeli security Cabinet on Tuesday night approved a deal for a cease-fire with Hezbollah in Lebanon, signaling that more than a year of conflict will soon be suspended, and raising hopes around the region that Lebanon’s deadliest war in decades could be over.

The cease-fire will take effect at 4 a.m. Wednesday, President Joe Biden said at the White House.

The 10-1 vote by Israeli ministers came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly embraced the proposal in a televised speech to the nation.

Just hours earlier, Israeli forces had pounded the heart of Beirut and Hezbollah-dominated neighborhoods south of the city with some of the heaviest airstrikes of the war, sending residents fleeing in a panic.

Biden said he had spoken with Netanyahu and with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, and “I’m pleased to announce their governments have accepted the United States’ proposal to end the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.”

Biden said that although the agreed-on cease-fire is for 60 days, “This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities.”

But Netanyahu said in his televised address, “The length of the cease-fire will depend on what happens in Lebanon.”

“With the full understanding of the United States, we are preserving full military freedom of action – if Hezbollah breaks the agreement and seeks to arm itself, we will attack,” he said.

Netanyahu said there were three main reasons for a cease-fire: It would allow Israel to focus on Iran, which backs Hezbollah and Hamas; would give the military an opportunity to rest and rebuild its stockpiles; and would isolate Hamas, the group Israel has been fighting in the Gaza Strip since it led the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.

Netanyahu did not reveal the terms of the cease-fire or when it might take effect, and it is not yet certain that Israel’s understanding of the truce matches Hezbollah’s.

But the proposed deal, mediated by U.S. and French diplomats, had called for Israeli troops to withdraw from Lebanon and Hezbollah’s fighters to move north of the Litani River, allowing the Lebanese army – which is not a party to the conflict – and a U.N. peacekeeping force to fill the vacuum. The cease-fire would be overseen by several countries, including the U.S. and France, as well as by the United Nations.

“It is imperative that this cease-fire be respected, and that it be lasting, in order to restore the security of the Lebanese and Israeli people,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday, in a video address. He added that his country would “spare no effort to support the implementation of this agreement,” including by helping the Lebanese army increase its presence in southern Lebanon.

The truce arrives just eight weeks before Biden is scheduled to relinquish his office to Donald Trump, and it follows months of intensive but frustrating diplomacy by the president and his administration in search of peace. They have tried to balance steadfast support for Israel with efforts to temper its retaliatory campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon, often to little apparent effect.

Biden said the cease-fire in Lebanon creates an opening to halt the fighting with Hamas in Gaza, as well, and his administration will renew peace talks on that front.

The Biden administration hopes that a truce will become a durable peace and open a path to greater regional stability after more than a year of escalating conflict pitting Israel against Iran and its regional proxies, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah began in October 2023 after the group began firing rockets into northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas, which had just raided southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking another 250 to Gaza as hostages.

Israel returned fire into Lebanon, and the conflict escalated into a low-level war that displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border. Since September, Israel has sharply escalated the war, detonating thousands of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies it had booby-trapped, intensifying its bombing campaign in Lebanon, assassinating Hezbollah’s leader and launching a ground invasion.

“Let’s be clear: Israel did not launch this war,” Biden said. “The Lebanese people did not seek this war, either.”

Hezbollah has sustained blow after blow over the past few months, including the deaths of many of its fighters and its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Israeli officials say they have achieved their goals in Lebanon and that they are ready to turn their focus squarely to destroying the last remnants of Hamas in Gaza.

“Hamas relied on Hezbollah to fight by its side,” Netanyahu said Tuesday. “With Hezbollah out of the picture, Hamas is now alone in the battle. Our pressure on them will grow.”

Reiterating Israel’s determination to fight in Gaza, Netanyahu said Tuesday, “I promised you victory, and we will achieve victory.”

The war in Lebanon has killed nearly 3,800 Lebanese, according to the government, and has displaced more than 1 million people in the country, or nearly a quarter of the population. About 100 Israelis have been killed and tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes in northern Israel.

The pace of attacks has only intensified in recent days. Tuesday, as Israeli ministers were discussing the cease-fire proposal, Israeli airstrikes rocked the center of Beirut, shortly after the Israeli military issued a series of evacuation warnings, the first for the area since the war began.

The areas targeted by the warnings included an upscale neighborhood on Beirut’s seafront, home to the American University of Beirut. The streets soon clogged with traffic as people tried to get out.

Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 10 people had been killed and dozens of others injured in the strikes. Many were presumed to be trapped under rubble, with rescuers working into the night as Israeli surveillance drones whirred overhead.

Southern Lebanon, where Israeli ground troops have been operating, also experienced heavy strikes throughout the day that killed at least eight people, including children, according to the health ministry.

Bachir Khodr, the governor of a hard-hit region in eastern Lebanon, said he had urged residents via social media and television networks to wait until Wednesday morning to return. “Baalbek is still under attack,” he said, referring to his region’s capital.

The Israeli military said it had struck 180 targets in Lebanon over the past day.

Some of the strikes were aimed at Al-Qard Al-Hasan, a financial institution tied to Hezbollah, in what appeared to be an attempt to destroy Hezbollah’s financial capabilities in the final days of the war. The de facto bank had also been targeted last month in a wave of Israeli strikes across Lebanon.

Air-raid sirens wailed across northern Israel on Tuesday, warning of incoming rockets and drone attacks from Lebanon.

Despite their heavy losses, Hezbollah fighters have regularly fired missiles and drones at Israel over the past year, many of which have been intercepted by Israel’s air defenses. On Sunday, Hezbollah fired about 250 projectiles into Israel, one of its heaviest barrages of the war, a day after an Israeli strike in Beirut killed more than 25 people.

Many questions about the cease-fire proposal remain unanswered, including how the Lebanese army, overseen by the ailing Lebanese government, would exert authority over heavily armed Hezbollah militants. Lebanon’s government was set to meet Wednesday morning to discuss the cease-fire.

A U.N. spokesperson, Farhan Haq, said U.N. peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon and the U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon “stand ready to enforce” a cease-fire. He added that the U.N. was “seriously concerned” about the heavy Israeli bombardment campaign still underway in Lebanon.

Hezbollah, which is not a formal party to the agreement, and has addressed peace negotiations through an intermediary, did not immediately comment on it Tuesday. But the group’s leader, Sheik Naim Kassem, suggested last week that Hezbollah would accept a truce if Israel stopped striking Lebanon and Lebanon retained its sovereignty. That would represent a concession for Hezbollah, which had vowed to attack Israel until Israel ended the war in Gaza.

Despite Netanyahu’s support for a cease-fire, some far-right Israeli leaders who hold power in his coalition expressed strong opposition to the agreement. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the hard-line national security minister, called the cease-fire “a historic mistake” on social media.

Without a “security zone” inside Lebanon to ward off Hezbollah, the situation would ultimately lead to another war with the Lebanese armed group sometime in the future, he said.

Israel and Hezbollah last fought a major war in 2006, a 34-day campaign that killed more than 1,000 Lebanese and 150 Israelis before ending in an internationally backed cease-fire. For years, the two sides observed an uneasy truce, punctuated by periodic cross-border strikes, as both prepared for what they viewed as an inevitable major conflict.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.