Loose ends in Israel-Lebanon ceasefire agreement portend an uncertain future

The ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon, announced on Tuesday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will bring relief to an exhausted Lebanese population and prevent the country from becoming a new Gaza, but it leaves a number of loose ends that risk turning it into more of a break from hostilities than a lasting peace. The main issue is, precisely, that it will be based on a letter of guarantee from the United States assuring Israel that it will free to bomb Lebanon not only in retaliation for attacks, but also whenever it considers that Hezbollah is not complying with its side of the bargain. It will do so “forcefully” in the event of even the slightest lack of compliance, as Netanyahu has made clear.

This is the main point that has convinced the undecided in Israel, for fear of reproducing the situation that followed the previous war in 2006: Hezbollah significantly increased its strength, its arsenal and its presence south of the Litani River (about 18 miles from the border), despite the fact that the U.N. resolution that ended the war (and is still in force) prohibited it and that 10,000 blue helmets were monitoring its compliance. The mandate of the U.N. mission was to report violations to the Lebanese army, which did nothing to prevent them, given the risk of generating a civil war.

Israel’s self-granted right to bomb Lebanon effectively renders U.N. Resolution 1701, which prohibits it, meaningless. And there are also Israel’s violations of Lebanese airspace, which it has been carrying out for years and which are not mentioned in the agreement. In the text of the pact, revealed by the Lebanese daily L’Orient Le Jour, potential Israeli attacks are protected by an “inherent right to self-defense” that has Washington’s blessing, and with Donald Trump due to take office in less than two months.

The next U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee (who denies the fact that Palestinian territories are being occupied and calls the Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank “neighborhoods and towns”), said on Tuesday that Netanyahu is “very smart to retain the right to restart the fighting if Hezbollah breaks the truce.” What this means will actually be determined by Israel itself, in consultation with Washington, and if it considers that the Lebanese Armed Forces have not acted.

An example of this is the famous “regrouping” south of the Litani River by Hezbollah, an organization with political (it has lawmakers sitting in Parliament), military, educational, religious and charitable branches. And with considerable support among the Shiites of the area, who perceive it as the only force deterring Israel from invading their country, as the Lebanese Armed Forces have neither the willingness nor the ability to do so (they do not even have an Air Force).

Israel has warned that it will prevent Hezbollah from regrouping south of the Litani, taking advantage of the return of civilians to homes that have not been destroyed by Israeli troops. This Tuesday, one of Hezbollah’s lawmakers, Hasan Fadlallah, said in an interview with Reuters that “when Israel’s aggression against Lebanon ends, then the Resistance that was fighting in the battlefield will itself be working to help its people [more than a million, hundreds of thousands of them now in Syria] to return and to rebuild.”

That is to say, “without Hezbollah’s participation and its willingness to adhere to the agreement’s provisions, it will be completely meaningless,” wrote Haaretz commentator Zvi Barel on Tuesday. According to this agreement, Hezbollah will not be disarmed, he noted, and its weapons — thousands of long- and short-range missiles, its arsenal of drones, its advanced ballistic technology and its entire military infrastructure — will continue to exist. If the agreement is fully implemented, the organization will move further away from Israel, north of the Litani River. But it will not disappear, added this analyst.

The Lebanese government, which has an interim prime minister and has been without a president for two years, will be in charge of overseeing the sale, provision and production of weapons, as well as dismantling all unauthorized facilities linked to the production of weapons and related materials, according to the agreement. The United States, Israel’s main ally, will chair the committee overseeing implementation, risking accusations of bias.

The deal also gives Washington another mission: “The United States will enhance indirect negotiations between Israel and Lebanon to achieve an internationally recognized delineation of the land border.” This is precisely what the Beirut government has been demanding for years, calling on Israel to agree to negotiate their differences over the withdrawal line certified by the United Nations in 2000. The idea also figured unsuccessfully in the 2006 resolution and Israel, in a position of strength and, as Netanyahu has pointed out, now concerned with flexing its muscles against Iran, Hezbollah’s sponsor, will not have many reasons to open that can of worms.

Israel did agree in 2022 — under supervision by White House envoy Amos Hochstein — to a delimitation of maritime borders for gas exploitation that left most fields on the southern side and few on the Lebanese side. So much so that Netanyahu (then in a brief hiatus in the opposition) initially promised to denounce the agreement if he returned to power, yet he has not done so.

This is not the only issue that could be put on hold when the diplomatic spotlight moves away from Lebanon and Western governments turn their attention to more urgent crises. Another pending matter is the reconstruction of a ruined country, where it is estimated that the bombings have destroyed or damaged 100,000 housing units. The Israeli army has also left 37 villages in the south of Lebanon in ruins, emulating the model used in Gaza in its advance. On November 14, the World Bank estimated that the 13 months of conflict have meant losses for the country of $8.5 billion, especially the last two months. A total of 166,000 people have lost their jobs and the GDP will shrink by 6.6% this year, for a contraction of 34% in five years of economic crisis.

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