The Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire agreement has taken effect in Lebanon, according to a timeline laid out by President Joe Biden, who said it was designed to be “a permanent cessation of hostilities.”
Biden also said the US would help lead another push to secure a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza.
The deal stipulates a 60-day halt in hostilities, which negotiators have described as the foundation of a lasting truce. In that time, Hezbollah fighters are expected to retreat 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Israel border, while Israeli ground forces should withdraw from Lebanese territory.
President Joe Biden lauded Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for agreeing to a U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement that would put a pause to the fighting with Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.
Speaking Tuesday from the Rose Garden at the White House, President Biden said the agreement “heralds new start” for Lebanon’s sovereignty and security in the Middle East.
“Under the deal reached today, effective at 4 a.m. [Wednesday] local time, the fighting across the Lebanese-Israeli border will end. Will end,” he said. “This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities.”
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had endorsed an imminent ceasefire in the country’s war with the Lebanese group after his full cabinet approved the deal on Tuesday evening despite opposition from his far-right allies.
In televised remarks after the Israeli security cabinet met to vote on the proposal for a 60-day ceasefire, Netanyahu said he was ready to implement the deal, but added that Israel would retain “complete military freedom of action” in the event of an infringement by Hezbollah.
“We will enforce the agreement and respond forcefully to any violation. Together, we will continue until victory,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu said that there were three reasons to pursue a ceasefire: to focus on the threat from Iran; replenish depleted arms supplies and rest tired reservists; and to isolate Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that triggered war in the region when it attacked Israel on 7 October last year.
More than 3,760 people have been killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon the past 13 months, many of them civilians, according to Lebanese health officials. The bombardment has driven 1.2 million people from their homes.
Hezbollah began attacking Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, a day after Hamas attacked southern Israel, in support of the Palestinian militant group. That has set off more than a year of fighting escalated into all-out war in September with massive Israeli airstrikes across Lebanon and an Israeli ground invasion of the country’s south.
It’s not clear how the ceasefire will affect the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, where more than 44,000 people have been killed and more than 104,000 wounded in the 13-month war between Israel and Hamas, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
