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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced plans for a ceasefire with Hizbollah, raising hopes of an end to the year-long hostilities between Israeli forces and the Lebanese militant group.
In a pre-recorded television address on Tuesday, Netanyahu said he would take the proposed deal to Israel’s cabinet. It must also be approved by Lebanon’s caretaker government, which is due to discuss it on Wednesday.
Netanyahu said the “duration of the ceasefire depends on what will happen in Lebanon”, and that he had reached “full understandings” with the US that Israel will maintain “full military freedom of action” in the event that Hizbollah violates the agreement.
“If Hizbollah violates the agreement and tries to arm itself — we will attack,” Netanyahu said. “If it tries to rebuild terrorist infrastructure near the border — we will attack. If it launches a rocket, if it digs a tunnel, if it brings in a truck with missiles — we will attack.”
Full details of the terms of the ceasefire deal were not released.
Netanyahu’s announcement came hours after the Israeli military stepped up its bombardment of Lebanon, hitting what it said were more than 20 Hizbollah targets in Beirut on Tuesday and issuing evacuation orders for parts of the centre of the Lebanese capital.
Diplomats hope the deal will pave the way for an end to one of the bloodiest rounds of fighting in decades of conflict between Israel and Hizbollah.
The latest hostilities erupted last year when Hizbollah began firing rockets at Israel in solidarity with Hamas shortly after the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack on Israel.
The fighting has since killed more than 3,700 Lebanese and more than 140 Israelis, as well as forcing people from their homes on both sides of the border. More than 1mn Lebanese and about 60,000 Israelis have been displaced.
For most of the past year, the fighting between Hizbollah and Israel was 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 it has escalated into a full-blown war, with Israel carrying out a ferocious bombardment of targets across Lebanon before launching a ground invasion in October.
The offensive dealt a series of devastating blows to Hizbollah, killing its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, and damaging large amounts of its weapons and infrastructure as well as destroying broad swaths of the country’s east and south.
Hizbollah and its patron Iran said most of the last year that they would not agree to a ceasefire without an end to the war in Gaza, which Israel invaded after the October 7 attack.
But Hizbollah has since changed its position, and Israel’s offensive in Gaza continues.
Cartography by Cleve Jones