Israel's security cabinet weighs Lebanon ceasefire proposal

Photo: Francisco Seco Associated Press A man watches a rainbow from a promenade in the Israeli city of Haifa.

Marc Jourdier – Agence France-Presse and Layal Abou Rahal – Agence France-Presse in Jerusalem and Beirut respectively

Published at 7:37 a.m.

• Middle East

The Israeli security cabinet meets Tuesday to discuss a ceasefire in Lebanon, where Israel is at war with Hezbollah, while the United States has spoken of a close agreement, while urging caution.

At a time when diplomatic efforts are intensifying, Israel is increasing its bombings on the strongholds of the Islamist movement, notably on the southern suburbs of Beirut, which were targeted again Tuesday after a call to evacuate. As of Monday, at least 31 people had been killed across Lebanon, authorities said.

The United States, the European Union and the United Nations are trying to secure a truce between Israel and the powerful Iranian-backed Lebanese movement, which entered into open warfare in late September after months of exchanges of fire on the sidelines of the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

Israel has “no excuse” for refusing a ceasefire, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Tuesday. “Hopefully today the government of (Benjamin) Netanyahu will approve the ceasefire agreement,” he added.

The United Nations has reiterated its call for a “permanent ceasefire” in Lebanon, Israel and Gaza.

The security cabinet is set to meet Tuesday afternoon to discuss a ceasefire agreement, Deputy Secretary of State Sharren Haskel said, declining to elaborate on the text.

“We believe we are at the point where we are close” to an agreement, White House spokesman John Kirby said Monday, while stressing that nothing was a given yet.

Also heavily involved in mediation efforts, the French presidency said Monday that discussions had “advanced significantly.”

But Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Tuesday that his country would act “with force” if an agreement was violated. “If you don’t act, we will, and with force,” he said, quoted by his ministry, during an interview with the UN special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert.

The war that has been raging since October 2023 in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas has spread to Lebanon since September, after a year of exchanges of fire on both sides of the border between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian Islamist movement. Tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced in the border regions of northern Israel and southern Lebanon.

“Tunnels, rockets”

According to the American news site Axios, the agreement is based on a US plan for a 60-day truce during which Hezbollah and the Israeli army would withdraw from southern Lebanon and allow the Lebanese army to deploy there.

It includes the establishment of an international committee to monitor its implementation, added Axios, specifying that the United States would have given assurances of its support for Israeli military action in the event of hostile acts by Hezbollah.

The mediation is based on UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the previous war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, and which stipulates that only the Lebanese army and peacekeepers can be deployed on Lebanon’s southern border.

However, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has said that a ceasefire would be “a big mistake.”

Dorit Sison, 51, from northern Israel, said she feared a settlement like in 2006, which she said allowed Hezbollah to “rearm.” Now, she added, “they have tunnels, rockets, all the munitions possible.”

For Nahum Donita, a 60-year-old Tel Aviv resident, “it’s clear that Hezbollah cannot be trusted… But… the Israeli government is not trustworthy either.”

Israel says it wants to neutralize Hezbollah in southern Lebanon to secure its border and allow the return of 60,000 displaced residents. The Shiite movement, which has suffered severe blows since September, has assured that it will fight Israel as long as the offensive in Gaza continues, while saying it is open to a ceasefire.

Hezbollah fired at least 30 projectiles at Israel on Monday, according to the army.

According to the Ministry of Health, nearly 3,800 people have been killed in Lebanon since October 2023, most of them since last September.

On the Israeli side, 82 soldiers and 47 civilians have been killed in 13 months.

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Protecting oneself from the rain

The Israeli army is also continuing its strikes on the besieged Gaza Strip, where 11 people were killed during the night from Monday to Tuesday, according to the Civil Defense.

At the start of winter, thousands of displaced people are trying to protect themselves from the rain with derisory means. “We try as much as we can to prevent rainwater from seeping into the tents so that the children don't get soaked,” says Ayman Siam, a father who has taken refuge in the Yarmouk camp in Gaza City, in the north.

The winter is going to be “horrible,” warned Louise Wateridge, an emergency officer at the UN refugee agency (UNRWA). Gaza residents “have not had the most basic things for 13 months: no food, no water, no shelter. With rain and cold on top of all that…”, she explained to AFP.

The war was triggered by the unprecedented attack launched by Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,207 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data, including hostages killed or killed in captivity.

The Israeli offensive carried out in retaliation in Gaza left at least 44,249 dead, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.

Israeli minister wants to halve Gaza population

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said that Israel should “conquer” the Gaza Strip and halve the local Palestinian population through “voluntary emigration.”

Speaking Monday night at a conference hosted by the Yesha Council, a body representing settlers in the occupied West Bank, Smotrich said “you can and you must conquer the Gaza Strip, you should not be afraid of that word.”

“There is no doubt that in Gaza, with the encouragement of voluntary emigration, there is here, in my opinion, a unique opportunity that is opening up with the new (Trump) administration,” added the minister, who heads the far-right “Zionism” party. religious.”

“We can create a situation in which, within two years, the population of Gaza will be reduced by half,” Mr. Smotrich said.

On November 14, Human Rights Watch considered that the repeated forced displacement of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip constituted a crime against humanity, accusations rejected as “completely false” by Israel.

Israel’s “actions also appear to meet the definition of ethnic cleansing” in areas where the army has ordered Palestinians to leave and where they will not be able to return, the NGO had judged in a report.

“The words ‘ethnic cleansing’ are increasingly used to describe what is happening in northern Gaza,” the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell had also declared on November 11 on X.

“Irresponsible”

Plans for the “voluntary transfer” of the Gaza population by Mr. Smotrich and his fellow National Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, sparked an outcry in January.

“The United States rejects recent statements by Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir advocating the relocation of Palestinians out of Gaza,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said at the time, calling the remarks “irresponsible.”

Despite its unilateral withdrawal in 2005, Israel is considered under international law to be the occupying power in the Gaza Strip, a territory captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Hamas, which seized power there in 2007, accuses Israel of wanting to continue the war triggered by the October 7 attack in order to pursue a policy of “ethnic cleansing” in the Gaza Strip, where 2.4 million Palestinians live.

The possible return of a Jewish civilian presence in this territory has been rejected by Benjamin Netanyahu, but it is being discussed by the most radical ministers in his government.

“It is obvious that in the end, there will be a Jewish civilian presence in the Gaza Strip,” Mr. Smotrich said during a meeting with right-wing activists in October.