If the leaks and briefings are to be believed, Israel is getting ready to end its war in Lebanon. With the US pushing hard, and after a successful military campaign, reports say that Israeli leaders are looking to make a deal. Lebanese Hezbollah joined Hama’s war against Israel on 8 October, 2023; around 100,000 Israeli civilians have evacuated the border area.
Almost immediately after Israeli troops moved into the Gaza Strip, determined to oust Hamas and release the hostages captured on 7 October, there were negotiations, brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the USA, to try and reach some kind of deal that would free the hostages and end the war. Apart from a brief ceasefire in December, that deal is still being unsuccessfully negotiated today.
There are signs that Hezbollah, with its new leadership is preparing for some sort of agreement
Negotiations between Israel and Hezbollah have also been going on for months, led by the Biden administration. Amos Hochstein, de facto US special envoy on Israel/Hezbollah issues, shuttled between Beirut, Jerusalem and DC and presented all sorts of deals in an effort to prevent an all-out war and allow Israelis and Lebanese to return to their homes near the border.
All these attempts failed, getting stuck on one key issue: Hezbollah refused to stop shooting as long as the war in Gaza continued. As soon as there was some kind of ceasefire with Hamas, Hezbollah indicated that they’d be willing to sign on, but until then the rockets would continue.
It’s against this backdrop of dead-end talks, with escalating exchanges, that Israel began a broader campaign against Hezbollah, decapitating its leadership, destroying its communications network with pager bombs and wiping out most of its missile stock. Since invading southern Lebanon the Israeli army has captured Hezbollah strongholds and destroyed underground Hezbollah bases.
Hamas was the government of Gaza and, despite a year-long war, it is still the nearest thing to a government that Gaza has. One of Israel’s key war aims in Gaza is to oust that Hamas government, though there is still no plan for how to do that or what to replace it with.
Hezbollah, on the other hand, is not the Lebanese government. It’s a part of the Lebanese government, one member of a coalition in Lebanon’s confusing post-war constitutional arrangements, but it’s not the most powerful political force in the country. Lebanon’s prime minister, Najib Mikati, has always been eager for a ceasefire, and angrily rejected Iran’s attempt to negotiate in his country’s name. But ultimately he doesn’t control Hezbollah.
Israel has never been all that specific about what its war aims are in Lebanon beyond making it safe for its northern evacuees to return home. Disarming or destroying Hezbollah altogether is near enough impossible; it’s too big and too embedded in Lebanon and Syria, too well-funded and capable.
A more realistic plan is modeled on the end of the 2006 Lebanon war: degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities and force it away from the Israeli border, perhaps north of the Litani river as originally specified in UN Security Council Resolution 1701, to be replaced by the Lebanese military.
This, though, isn’t quite enough. UNSCR 1701 didn’t stop Hezbollah from rearming after 2006, creeping back to the Israeli border, building a whole network of fortresses, watchtowers and weapons caches, and preparing its own mass invasion of Israel, 7 October style. Israel is demanding freedom to hit Hezbollah targets near the border even after a ceasefire.
Strictly, that agreement would mean replacing Resolution 1701, which isn’t going to happen over a Russian veto. So any such deal would have to be informal between Israel, the US, Lebanon and Hezbollah itself.
On Hezbollah’s side, the key issue is whether the organisation is willing to de-couple its war with Israel from the war in Gaza. That conflict is unresolvable by diplomacy, at least for now. Israel can’t accept Hamas remaining in power and rearming. Hamas demands that any ceasefire deal leaves them in control of the Strip with a complete Israeli withdrawal. Despite pressure on all sides, there’s no way to square that circle yet. With Hamas leader Yehya Sinwar dead, perhaps the terror group will reconsider its positions.
There are some signs that Hezbollah, with its own new leadership, is nearly done with giving Hamas a veto over its future and is preparing for some sort of deal. Amos Hochstein is shuttling between the players again, and the outline of an agreement is taking shape.
Their plan is for there to be two separate deals: Under the first deal Hezbollah will withdraw from the border and the Lebanese army will replace it, under agreed international monitoring, to implement UN Resolution 1701. This deal will be signed by Israel, the US, Lebanon and other countries. Under the second deal, a kind of side deal, the USA will agree to guarantee Israel freedom of action to keep Hezbollah away from the border using force.
Political complications may arise from this in Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is supposedly a supporter of a deal to end the war in Lebanon, and has been trying to sell it politically to his ministers. The hard-right parties though, led by Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, and even some of Netanyahu’s Likud colleagues, are likely to consider any deal that allows Hezbollah to keep their arms and lives to be a betrayal and surrender.
In the meantime, the war continues to take its toll. Seven people were killed in Israel on Thursday from Hezbollah rockets, and many Lebanese citizens are dying in Israeli bombings of Hezbollah targets in Beirut, Baalbek and Tyre.
No deal is likely before the US election this Tuesday, not least because Netanyahu doesn’t want to risk angering Donald Trump, who wants ceasefires but doesn’t want Joe Biden to get the credit. The last 13 months in Israel have felt like a constant opening of new fronts of conflict: Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Iran. A war ending rather than beginning for a change would be a rare piece of good news after a violent and deadly year.
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