Israeli far-right minister criticises Hizbollah ceasefire plan

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Israel’s far-right national security minister and the mayors of several northern towns have lashed out at a plan for a US-brokered ceasefire with the Lebanese militant group Hizbollah.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet is due to meet later on Tuesday to vote on the deal, which would involve an initial 60-day truce, and pave the way for an end to more than a year of hostilities with Hizbollah. John Kirby, spokesman for the US National Security Council, said on Monday that an agreement was “close”.

However, in an interview with Israeli public radio, Itamar Ben-Gvir said the ceasefire would be a “historic mistake”, and that Israel should continue its assault on Hizbollah. “It will be a historical missed opportunity if we stop everything and go backwards,” the minister said.

His criticism was echoed by the mayors of several towns in northern Israel, which has borne the brunt of Hizbollah’s rocket launches over the past year, with David Azoulay, mayor of Metula, calling the proposal “shameful” and “an agreement of surrender . . . to Hizbollah, an arm of Iran”.

Avichai Stern, mayor of Kiryat Shmona, called the deal a “total capitulation”.

“We managed to bring down Hizbollah but instead of continuing to crush them into dust we are giving them a burst of oxygen and bringing them back to life,” he told the Israel Hayom newspaper. “It seems to me that someone here has gone crazy.”

The proposed agreement envisages a 60-day truce during which Israeli forces would withdraw from Lebanon, and Hizbollah would move its weapons north of the Litani river, which runs 30km from the border between Israel and Lebanon. 

The Lebanese Armed Forces, with support from the UN peacekeeping body Unifil, would take control of the areas in southern Lebanon vacated by Israeli troops and Hizbollah fighters. If the truce holds, Israel and Lebanon would then work to resolve disputes over their contested border.

Amid the mounting criticism from Israel’s northern mayors, an Israeli official said the country was “agreeing to a ceasefire in Lebanon, not to the end of the war”, comparing it to a brief truce in Gaza between Israel and Hamas last year which was followed by a resumption of fighting. 

“We will test the ceasefire in the field, and act accordingly. Even in the ceasefire in Gaza, it was claimed that Israel would not return to fighting, [but] it returned — and in a big way . . . in the face of tremendous international pressure,” the official said. “The security approach has changed — Israel will respond in Lebanon against any threat, which has not happened in the last 20 years in Lebanon.”

Diplomats hope the deal will bring an end to one of the bloodiest rounds of fighting in the decades-old conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group, with more than 3,700 Lebanese and more than 120 Israelis having been killed over the past year.

The hostilities began when Hizbollah began firing rockets at Israel in solidarity with Hamas in the days after the Palestinian militant group’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

For almost a year, they were largely confined to exchanges of fire in a narrow strip of land either side of the Blue Line, the UN-demarcated border between the two countries. But in recent months they have escalated into a full-blown war, with Israel carrying out a ferocious aerial bombardment of targets across Lebanon and launching a ground invasion in early October.

Fighting has intensified in recent days in parallel with the negotiations, with Hizbollah militants and Israeli troops clashing in southern Lebanese villages and Israeli air strikes pounding areas where Hizbollah holds sway across the country.

Israeli warplanes targeted Beirut’s Dahiyeh district with dozens of strikes on Sunday and Monday, including in the area of Tayouneh which borders the city centre. 

Hizbollah has also stepped up its attacks, with the militant group launching more than 250 rockets and missiles at Israel on Sunday in one of the heaviest days of fire from Lebanon since the start of the war.