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The ink has barely dried on the ceasefire agreement to end the war in Lebanon and both sides have already violated it, blaming each other for initiating these violations. These might be teething problems — after all, old habits die hard — or a way of sending early warnings that this time no hostile act will go unpunished. It has taken nearly 14 months of hostilities, thousands of people killed, many of them civilians, devastation, displacement, and suffering for both Israel and Lebanon — although Israel’s war was with Hezbollah — to get back to exactly where the 2006 war ended and agree to almost the exact terms of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that ended the war back then.
Philosophically, it makes one contemplate the sorry state of humankind, as so much destruction and misery could have been avoided. Politically speaking, the questions that remain are whether this time the agreed 60-day ceasefire could turn into a permanent one, and whether this could also bring the war in Gaza to an end, or actually prolong it.
Both sides were quick to declare victory and leave their options open. In reality, neither side is defeated, although of the two Hezbollah has suffered the heavier losses, with its top leadership killed, including long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah, and its military capabilities degraded. However, Israel cannot ignore the fact that for more than a year Hezbollah gained a strategic achievement in keeping northern Israel nearly empty and more than 60,000 of the region’s inhabitants displaced, living in temporary accommodation and still not feeling safe enough to return to their homes. In Lebanon, it is estimated that roughly 1.4 million people have been uprooted by the conflict, and although thousands headed back home as soon as the ceasefire was announced, they did so for lack of an available alternative.
Reflecting on the war, there is a general agreement that Nasrallah miscalculated Israel’s vulnerability on Oct. 7, when the country was caught by surprise by the Hamas attack, and then joining on the following day a sort of war of attrition that was enough to eventually trigger Israel to respond on a large scale. While the lack of preparedness for the Hamas attack demonstrated a total perceptual and intelligence failure that led to operational disaster, in the case of Hezbollah, Israel had accurate intelligence on the location of its entire leadership and much of its missile arsenal, and possessed the military plans and capabilities to take much of it out.
Both sides agreed to a ceasefire because of the political and military price of continuing the conflict. Hezbollah found itself in an inferior military position, and under severe domestic and international pressure. The Israeli government also responded to similar pressures, although in this case there was at least domestic counter-pressure to continue the war with Hezbollah until the elusive “total victory”; and as Netanyahu himself alluded to, the Israeli army needed time to regroup and to restock ammunition.
Both sides were quick to declare victory and leave their options open.
Yossi Mekelberg
UN Security Council Resolution 1701 was the right remedy back in 2006, and if adhered to still provides a recipe to keep the Israeli-Lebanese conflict quiet, as in principle it creates a buffer zone not between Israel and Lebanon, but between Israel and Hezbollah, through the deployment of Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers to southern Lebanon, excluding both the Israeli army and Hezbollah from the area between the Blue Line and the Litani River. However, this, like any other agreement, is only as good as the commitment of all signatories to its terms, and this is far from being guaranteed. Unlike the situation in the years leading up to 2023, it is now for the US, France, and UNIFIL, as guarantors of this agreement, to hold the sides to account should they violate it.
For Hezbollah to remain relevant in Lebanese politics, it must at least maintain the pretense of resistance to Israel and of being the “defender” of Lebanon. For Israel, there is a clear interest in maintaining a quiet border with Lebanon that enables the displaced to return, but at the same prevents Hezbollah from rearming or digging tunnels deep into Israel. UN Security Council Resolution 1701 also incorporates Resolution 1559, which states that all armed militias should be disarmed, a resolution which will be fulfilled only when Hezbollah dismantles its military capabilities, although in all probability this will not happen. It is also the case that in light of the fragile Lebanese political system and of Lebanon currently having a caretaker government with limited authority, questions remain over whether it would be able, despite being genuinely willing, to force Hezbollah to comply with the agreement.
But there is also another aspect to this ceasefire agreement: How will it affect the war in Gaza? By Hezbollah’s decoupling of the two fronts, Hamas has been put in an inferior position both militarily and politically in its negotiations with Israel. Moreover, with the ultranationalist-religious parties calling the shots within the Israeli government, there is no mood for any kind of compromise, especially as the end of the war in Lebanon would ease the pressure on both its regular army, but more importantly mainly on its reserve forces.
The most likely scenario is that instead of a ceasefire with Hezbollah being a step toward ending the war in Gaza, and with it the end of the unimaginable suffering of millions of Palestinians, and of the hostages and their families, Israel is entrenching its presence in the enclave, and as was suggested by former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, intends to ethnically cleanse the north of Gaza. Moreover, leaders of the settler movement in the West Bank have already been allowed to identify locations for building settlements. While there are those in different international corridors of power who are working on plans to govern Gaza after the war, ensuring it is under Palestinian rule with international support, the Israeli government seems to have a completely different plan, one that entails reoccupying at least parts of the Gaza Strip and, if we are to believe Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, “encouraging” half its population to leave.
A ceasefire along the Israeli-Lebanese border is one of the few positive developments in the region for more than a year. It should not be allowed to become a catalyst for prolonging the tragedy of the war in Gaza.
• Yossi Mekelberg is a professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House.
X: @YMekelberg