In a region that has seen too much bloodshed, this fragile truce is better than none
After 417 days of continuous fighting following the October 7 attacks, a rare flash of good news from the Middle East – a ceasefire in Israel’s war against Hezbollah. The bombs, for now, will no longer rain down on Beirut, Tyre, Baalbek and the other Lebanese towns and cities that had already suffered great bloodshed.
Across the Israeli side of the border, the residents of northern towns like Kiryat Shmona – which photographer Kate Geraghty and I visited on a reporting trip to Israel and Lebanon last month – will be granted a reprieve from Hezbollah rocket fire.
An Israel Defence Forces reserve officer visits Luba Gershenzon in Kiryat Shmona, northern Israel, near the border with Lebanon, last month.Credit: Kate Geraghty
It has been almost a year to the day since this dangerous region could celebrate such an unequivocally positive day: the deal last November under which Hamas returned over 60 hostages from Gaza in exchange for a pause in fighting and the release of Palestinian prisoners. But the ceasefire lasted only a week. Fighting in Gaza resumed, intensified and eventually metastasised into a full-scale war in Lebanon that has claimed the lives of about 3800 Lebanese people and 120 Israelis.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel in October last year in what it said was an act of solidarity with Hamas’ war in Gaza. This prompted months of tit-for-tat fire across Israel’s northern border and the evacuation of about 60,000 Israelis from their homes. The conflict, however, was relatively low-key and attracted far less attention than the devastating war in Gaza.
That changed in September when Israel detonated thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon, swiftly following up with an air strike that killed Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Then came the Israeli ground invasion of southern Lebanon and an intense period of air strikes focused on Hezbollah’s strongholds. Innocent Lebanese civilians paid a heavy price for a conflict that many wanted to stay out of.
Now, Hezbollah has agreed to end its armed presence in a broad swath of its southern Lebanon heartland in exchange for an end to Israeli attacks. After underestimating the ferocious response its attacks on northern Israel would eventually provoke, Hezbollah has suffered a demoralising strategic defeat. Its weapons stockpile is significantly degraded, and its charismatic figurehead is dead. For all the talk of the Iranian-backed group being the most powerful non-state actor in the world, it did not manage to inflict major damage on Israel in terms of lives lost or properties destroyed. Nor did it manage to hamstring Israel’s battle plans in Gaza.
It’s a different story from a similar 34-day war in 2006, which was widely viewed as a strategic success for Hezbollah and a blow to Israeli pride. That said, Hezbollah has not been eliminated. It will remain a powerful political and military force in Lebanese society and will have the opportunity to regroup. Iran will help its proxy restock its arsenal. For now, though, it is a dramatically diminished organisation.
“It’s not the same Hezbollah any more,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared while announcing the ceasefire to his citizens on Wednesday. “We pushed Hezbollah decades back.”
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong celebrated the breakthrough as “a critical step for alleviating immense human suffering and ensuring displaced communities on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border can return home”.
Big questions still remain, however.
Netanyahu’s government has not yet announced a detailed plan for safely returning its evacuated citizens to northern Israel. Many will understandably be too scared to return any time soon, given the threat that the ceasefire deal may collapse and fighting resumes. Kiryat Shmona and neighbouring villages are likely to remain virtual ghost towns for some time.
And there is still no end in sight to the war in Gaza or a realistic vision for how the devastated enclave will be governed once the fighting ends. In the short term, the situation there may become even more deadly. “Our pressure on Hamas will grow stronger, and this will help us in the sacred mission of bringing back our hostages,” Netanyahu said.
US President Joe Biden said the truce was “designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities” between Israel and Hezbollah. While Biden deserves credit for his administration’s persistent efforts to secure a ceasefire in Lebanon, the idea of permanent peace seems wildly optimistic given the region’s bloodstained history. The United Nations resolution that was created to end the 2006 war proved toothless, and there are serious doubts about the Lebanese military’s ability to enforce a truce in Hezbollah’s southern heartland.
In the short term at least, the war in Lebanon looks set to stop. Fragile as it may be, this ceasefire deal is a welcome reminder that conflicts can end as well as expand, that diplomacy can still deliver results, and that sanity can ultimately prevail.
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