U.S. leaders are expressing optimism about prospects for a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hezbollah as the Biden administration, in its closing weeks, presses for progress.
U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein, already having visited Beirut to parley with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, said he would go to Israel on Nov. 20 to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “bring this to a close.”
Hezbollah authorized Berri to negotiate on its behalf.
A Hezbollah rocket attack on Israel delayed Hochstein’s flight, but he arrived late on Nov. 20.
Lebanon wants to see an end to a conflict that has brought widespread destruction since Israel went on the offensive in September.
Israel wants to end the incessant rocketing of its north by Hezbollah. Tens of thousands of Israelis have been forced to evacuate their homes after Hezbollah attacked in support of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Nov. 20 that conditions for any settlement would include “preservation of the intelligence capability and the preservation of the [Israeli military’s] right to act and protect the citizens of Israel from Hezbollah.”
Hezbollah’s allies in the Lebanese government said the terrorist group had responded positively to Hochstein’s proposal, which would entail both its fighters and Israeli ground forces withdrawing from a U.N. buffer zone in southern Lebanon.
It would be protected by thousands of additional U.N. peacekeepers and Lebanese troops.
Israel has sought a stronger enforcement mechanism, including the ability to conduct military operations against any Hezbollah threats, something Lebanon is likely to oppose.
Senior Israeli military reservists warned on Nov. 19 that Israel risks giving up on important achievements if it agrees to a cease-fire with Lebanon.
“A security zone must be established inside Lebanon,” officers from the Forum of Reservist Commanders and Fighters said.
“The IDF must create a strip 5 to 8 kilometers [3 to 5 miles] wide, from which all Lebanese residents are evacuated.”
Reserve Maj. Gen. Guy Zur, a former Ground Forces Command chief, said Israel “must not repeat past mistakes,” alluding to withdrawals Israel had made in the past only for Hezbollah to rearm and fortify there.
Lebanese residents there—many of them supporters brought in by Hezbollah over the past two decades—should not be allowed to return until the Lebanese army takes full responsibility there, Zur said.
“Any other agreement only signifies the countdown to the next round,” he said.
Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said in a televised speech on Nov. 20 that a halt to hostilities was now in Israel’s hands after he and his group had reviewed and given feedback to a U.S.-drafted cease-fire proposal.
He said a cease-fire depends upon Israel’s response and Netanyahu’s “seriousness.”
“If you attack Beirut, we will be attacking Tel Aviv,” he said.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has mainly accomplished its objectives close to the northern frontier, military strategist Elliot Chodoff told The Epoch Times.
It has destroyed Hezbollah’s ability to launch an Oct. 7-style ground attack and pushed its flat-trajectory, line-of-sight anti-tank weapons and heavier short-range missiles out of range, he said.
Lebanon’s topography favors Hezbollah, as the elevation rises going north, meaning they can still get a line of sight into Israel from five kilometers away.
Chodoff cautioned, though, that he thought the Israeli government might be making a mistake.
While the IDF says it has destroyed 80 percent of Hezbollah’s estimated 150,000 rockets, that leaves 30,000—which, Chodoff said, is still more than Hezbollah had in 2006 when Israel made its last offensive into Lebanon.
And those deemed “destroyed,” he said, include some rendered unusable to Hezbollah because they can’t be transported during the war to the south for firing.
But, he said, Israel must plan on Hezbollah attempting to rearm and bring those rockets south.
Some include Russian Katyusha rockets, which aren’t that accurate but are cheap enough—only $1,000 apiece—to fire large barrages at a modest cost.
“While the Iron Dome takes out a lot of them, it doesn’t take out all of them,” he said, and the use of a lot guarantees Hezbollah will hit something.
And the threat of such rocket attacks—needing to seek shelter during air raids and the constant wail of air-raid sirens—may deter Israel’s northern residents from moving home, particularly those with children, he said.
An air raid might cost someone an hour’s work time. Hezbollah would find the cost of $20,000 for 20 missiles a reasonable price to pay for depriving half a million Israelis of an hour’s work time, he said.
IDF soldiers said that as units pushed more than five kilometers from the border into a second layer of villages, they were still finding heavy fortification, including in residents’ homes.
“We’re cleansing the second line of villages of everything close to the [border] fence and blowing up almost all the houses, because there’s virtually no innocent homes there,” soldier Eyal Reichman said.
“Every place you see enormous quantities of ammunition. They are simply hornets’ nests.”
“We found the same infrastructure as in the first line” of villages, his comrade David Karas said. “Here, too, we’ve seen launchers in even greater quantities than in the first line of villages.”
They were seeing, though, less resistance from Hezbollah.
“We thought it would be even harder. Ultimately, the enemy is fleeing, but we run into a cell or two here and there,” Karas said.
Chodoff also warned that the pending negotiations reference the Taif Agreement, a 1989 measure ending 15 years of Lebanese civil war and ratified then by Lebanon’s parliament.
While the agreement bars “militias” from southern Lebanon, he said, it states explicitly that Hezbollah is not a militia but rather a resistance organization meant to fight “the Zionist entity.”
“That means us, Israel,” Chodoff said. And Hezbollah isn’t required to disarm by it.
Any demilitarization agreement calling for enforcement by the U.N.’s Lebanon peacekeeping force, UNIFIL, may be greeted with skepticism by Israel.
Israeli leaders say UNIFIL turned a blind eye to Hezbollah’s fortification of the border area for the two decades since Israel’s last withdrawal in 2006, a withdrawal predicated by unkept promises to demilitarize the area.
