From The Times
Netanyahu Signals Openness to Cease-Fire With Hezbollah, Officials Say
The United States is pushing Israel to reach a deal with the Lebanese militia by Thanksgiving, even as key details remained unresolved, Israeli officials said.
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Israeli Strikes Destroy Buildings Near Beirut
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Israel hit buildings in the Dahiya area south of Beirut, Lebanon, as it continued a heavy exchange of fire with Hezbollah.CreditCredit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
By
Ronen BergmanPatrick Kingsley and
Jack Nicas
Ronen Bergman reported from Tel Aviv, and Patrick Kingsley and Jack Nicas from Jerusalem.
Nov. 25, 2024
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has indicated he is open to a cease-fire in the yearlong conflict with Hezbollah, as U.S. officials pressured him to finalize a deal before Thanksgiving, according to two Israeli officials briefed on his thinking.
Mr. Netanyahu was scheduled to meet with his cabinet on Tuesday to discuss a proposed deal to end the war in Lebanon, two other Israeli officials said. Mediators have made significant progress toward a cease-fire over the past week, but a key sticking point has been Mr. Netanyahu’s insistence on securing some assurance that Israel could restart the fighting if Hezbollah broke the truce, Israeli officials said.
The latest proposal is seen as the best chance to end fighting that has killed thousands in Lebanon and close to 100 Israeli civilians and soldiers, while displacing roughly 60,000 people in Israel and about one million in Lebanon. But negotiations have been starting and stopping for weeks, and the two sides may not come to terms.
Mr. Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on his intentions. All of the officials who described his thinking spoke on the condition of anonymity, in order to discuss the sensitive, private negotiations.
Under the proposal, Israeli forces would withdraw from Lebanon within 60 days, while
Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia, would move north, farther from the Israeli border, according to the officials.
The Lebanese Army would deploy to southern Lebanon to ensure that Hezbollah stays north of the Litani River, the officials said, in effect creating a buffer zone along the Israeli border.
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Members of the Lebanese army stand guard as civil defense members work to retrieve bodies trapped under rubble at the site of an Israeli strike in central Beirut.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
The cease-fire would officially be an agreement among Israel, Lebanon and the mediating countries, including the United States. A top Lebanese lawmaker has been acting as a liaison with Hezbollah, which the country’s government does not control, and any deal would include the group’s unofficial approval, two of the officials said. Hezbollah is designated a terrorist organization by the United States.
Iran, which is Hezbollah’s primary ally and backer,
urged the group to accept a cease-fire earlier this month. Hezbollah’s new leader,
Naim Qassem, suggested in a video last week that the group would
agree to a cease-fire if Israel ended its attacks on Lebanon and Lebanon retained its sovereignty.
If all sides agree, the deal would be the first cease-fire in either Lebanon or the Gaza Strip in almost exactly a year. Last November, Israel and Hamas observed a weeklong truce in Gaza while they exchanged some hostages and prisoners. Israel and Hezbollah — which had begun launching rockets at Israel weeks earlier, in solidarity with Hamas — also stopped firing at each other that week, though they had not agreed to an official pact.
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After that pause, however, fighting on both fronts exploded again. It has intensified in Lebanon in the last two months, with Israel stepping up its bombing campaign and mounting a ground invasion.
More than 44,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, which began in October 2023 when Hamas attacked Israel in a raid that killed roughly 1,200 people.
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People in the West Bank celebrated the release of Palestinian prisoners last year during a temporary cease-fire.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
One focus of the negotiations has been how and whether Israeli forces would be able to redeploy inside Lebanon if Hezbollah rebuilt its military might along the Israel-Lebanon border.
Israel is worried that the last time it agreed to such a cease-fire, ending the 2006 Lebanon War, Lebanon failed to keep Hezbollah away from its southern border with Israel, two of the officials said. The current cease-fire proposal is modeled on the 2006 agreement, so this time, the officials said, Israel wants clear approval to uphold the deal itself — with force.
Israel wants the right to take military action against Hezbollah militants if they remain near the border or return there. Lebanese officials have been reluctant to agree to such language in the deal, the two officials said. Instead, officials said, Israel is seeking formal approval from the United States — either as part of the agreement or in an accompanying document — that Israel could redeploy forces in that scenario.
Mr. Netanyahu appears to be more open to a deal with Hezbollah in Lebanon than with Hamas in Gaza, in large part because he is more intent on the complete destruction of Hamas than Hezbollah. Yet, hard-line factions that are crucial to his political coalition have opposed any cease-fire. On Monday, Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, publicly urged Mr. Netanyahu to reject the proposal — but he stopped short of threatening to pull support for Mr. Netanyahu, as he has on the question of a cease-fire deal in Gaza.
“An agreement with Lebanon is a big mistake. A historic missed opportunity to eradicate Hezbollah,”
Mr. Ben-Gvir said. “As I warned before in Gaza, I warn now as well: Mr. Prime Minister, it is not too late to stop this agreement! We must continue until absolute victory!”
As for Hezbollah, it appeared the group was ready to accept a deal. Its patron, Iran, was notified on Monday that the cease-fire was imminent, said two Iranian members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the internal communications.
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The push for a cease-fire has been led by the United States and France. Last week,
the Biden administration dispatched a top envoy, Amos Hochstein, to Israel and Lebanon. U.S. officials “believe that the trajectory of this is going in a very positive direction,” John Kirby, a White House spokesman, told reporters on Monday. “But nothing is done until everything is done.”
The French government said in a statement that talks “have made significant progress” and that it hopes “parties involved will seize this opportunity as soon as possible.”
At the same time, Israel and Hezbollah, each seeking leverage in what could be the closing phase of talks, have launched some of the heaviest aerial attacks at each other since the fighting began.
On Sunday, Israeli officials said Hezbollah had fired at least 250 projectiles, a term often used for rockets, into Israel, including many toward Tel Aviv, injuring at least 13 people. In Lebanon, Israeli forces issued a series of sweeping evacuation orders for the area south of Beirut on Sunday night before striking what they said were
a dozen Hezbollah command centers. There were no immediate reports of casualties in those strikes.
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Beirut after an Israeli strike on Saturday.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
The heavy exchange of fire continued on Monday, causing schools to close on both sides of the border. The Israeli military said it had struck at least 25 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, including what it said were buildings used by Hezbollah’s leadership and intelligence operations. At the same time, in parts of northern Israel, residents scrambled to shelters as a new round of sirens announced about 30 incoming projectiles from Lebanon. Israeli officials said at least some had been intercepted by Israeli missiles.
At least seven people in Lebanon were injured in Israeli strikes on Monday, according to Lebanese state news media. In northern Israel, officials said that a 60-year-old man had been hurt in an attack from Lebanon.
Since the start of the war, Israeli attacks have killed more than 3,500 people in Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Israeli officials said Hezbollah attacks have killed 47 civilians, and Israeli’s military said 46 soldiers had died in the fighting in Lebanon.
If Israel and Hezbollah fail to approve the proposed cease-fire by Thursday, two of the officials said they believed it could be finalized by the weekend.
