Reports suggest that Israel’s war cabinet is preparing to discuss a temporary halt to its campaign against the Iranian-backed terror group Hezbollah.
Following high-level meetings over the weekend, a possible truce was outlined across the Israeli media. These details indicate that the proposed settlement would harm the Jewish state far more than its enemies.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s interior security minister, called the discussed ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon a “grave mistake”:
We have a historic opportunity to decisively act in the south [in Gaza] and north [in Lebanon]. It will be a historical missed opportunity if we stop everything and go backward.
To date, Israeli retaliation has involved striking significant blows against the Beirut-based Iranian terror proxy responsible for a campaign of rocket attacks on northern Israel, which began the day after the Hamas October 7th pogrom last year. Critics of this new diplomatic initiative see a prospective truce as disarming Israel and allowing Hezbollah to regroup.
Ongoing Israeli military successes have coincided with Tel Aviv facing greater isolation from international institutions. Outgoing European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell declared there ‘no excuse‘ for not implementing a ceasefire, which he asserts contains the security guarantees Israel needs.
Borrell’s lack of solidarity coincides with his support for the International Criminal Court’s so-called war crimes arrest warrant aimed at PM Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant (the first such warrant to target democratically elected leaders since the Court was founded in 2002).
From the available details, it appears the proposed ceasefire would leave northern Israelis abandoned, even if they were to return home. Under the proposed agreement, the Israel Defense Forces would withdraw from southern Lebanon. In return, Hezbollah and its heavy weaponry would relocate north of the Litani River, itself about 16 miles (25km) north of the Israeli border.
In turn, the Lebanese army would occupy the new border zone—backed by the existing UN peacekeeping force. It’s worth noting that the latter stood aside for Hezbollah to launch its October 8th rocket attacks last year, showing the mixture of hostility and indifference that characterises the international community’s approach to Israel.
With France and the United States lobbying hard for Israel to accept this ‘surrender deal,’ which would then be supervised by a US-led monitoring committee, the Israelis should at the very least fight hard to ensure they retain the right to retaliate should Hezbollah aggression continue.
