Daily Times

Israel and Hezbollah reached a cease-fire deal on Tuesday, providing a path to end a war that’s killed thousands of people since it was first ignited by the Israel-Hamas war.

The Israeli security cabinet approved the cease-fire proposal after a meeting in Jerusalem, Israel’s Channel 12 television reported.

Israeli approval of the deal would pave the way for a cease-fire declaration by President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron, according to four senior Lebanese sources who spoke to Reuters on Monday.

Guns on the Israel-Lebanon border would go silent on Wednesday under the deal, Reuters reported.

It wasn’t immediately clear how long the pause in fighting would last. Early reports suggested fighting would stop for 60 days, allowing time for Israel to gradually withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon while Hezbollah moves its forces farther from Israel’s border.

The agreement is not expected to have any material impact on the war in Gaza that started 14 months ago.

Israel launched an offensive in Lebanon in mid-September following months of tit-for-tat border attacks which started when Hezbollah attacked Israel in solidarity with Hamas and Palestinians in Gaza.

Since then, Israel has killed more than 3,000 people in Lebanon, according to Lebanon health ministry figures. More than one million people have been uprooted from their homes. Over the last year Hezbollah has launched thousands of rockets at northern Israel, forcing Israelis who live in communities there to flee south.

As part of its offensive, Israel launched a ground invasion, killed several Hezbollah leaders ? including its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah ? and injured thousands of people in an attack using exploding pagers.

Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 others back to Gaza as hostages. Israel responded by launching a military campaign to eliminate Hamas. Israel has killed at least 44,000 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claiming Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza. Netanyahu disputes the allegation.

Even as Israel and Hezbollah agreed the cease-fire, Israeli conducted air strikes on southern Beirut on Tuesday and Hezbollah continued to fire rockets at northern Israel.

On Monday, 31 people were killed across Lebanon in Israeli strikes, according to figures from Lebanon’s health ministry. While the deal was approved by Israel’s security cabinet, several far-right ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government opposed it.

Israel and Hezbollah have been engaged in low-level hostilities for years. The spillover of the Gaza conflict to Lebanon is the largest escalation involving Israel and Hezbollah since 2006, when they last fought a major war.