United States President Joe Biden says Israel and Lebanon have accepted a proposal to end the “devastating” Israel-Hezbollah conflict, setting the stage to halt nearly 14 months of cross-border fighting that has killed thousands of people.
In a televised address from Washington, DC, on Tuesday, Biden said the truce would begin at 4am local time (02:00 GMT) on Wednesday. The agreement did not relate to the ongoing Israeli operations in Gaza.
“Lasting security for the people of Israel and Lebanon cannot be achieved only on the battlefield. That’s why I directed my team to work with the governments of Israel and Lebanon to forge a ceasefire,” Biden said.
“The fighting across the Lebanese-Israeli border will end — will end. This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities.”
According to a statement, Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said he told Biden that he welcomed the deal to end hostilities between the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah and Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also told the US president that his government had approved the truce and that he appreciated his “understanding that Israel will maintain its freedom of action in enforcing it”, his office said.
As part of the ceasefire agreement, Israel will “gradually withdraw” its forces from southern Lebanon over the next 60 days, and the Lebanese Army and state security forces would deploy to the territory.
“Hezbollah’s terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon will not be allowed to be rebuilt,” Biden said in his remarks.
“Civilians on both sides will soon be able to safely return to their communities and begin to rebuild their homes, their schools, their farms, their businesses and their very lives.”
No US troops would be deployed to Lebanon, Biden added, but he released a joint statement with French President Emmanuel Macron that emphasised both countries “will work with Israel and Lebanon to ensure this arrangement is fully implemented and enforced”.
The US and France also committed “to lead and support international efforts for capacity-building of the Lebanese Armed Forces as well as economic development throughout Lebanon to advance stability and prosperity in the region”.
Lebanon began striking Israel on October 8, 2023, in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. Cross-border attacks persisted for months. Then, at the start of last month, Israel invaded southern Lebanon.
At least 3,768 Lebanese have been killed and 15,699 wounded since the fighting began.
Ongoing fighting
Despite the anticipated announcement, Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon continued to rage on Tuesday, with Israeli warplanes pounding Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Reporting from the Lebanese capital, Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi said Israeli strikes continued in the minutes immediately after Biden spoke.
“Right now, all of the politics we’ve heard in the last half hour to one hour, none of that matters,” Basravi said. “This evening, tonight in Beirut, in the capital of Lebanon, across multiple areas in this country, the war is still very much going.”
“Within five minutes or so of Biden completing his speech, we heard loud explosions in Beirut. Once again, sirens started sounding in northern Israel,” he said.
“In upper Galilee, Hezbollah fired a large amount of rockets across the border into Israeli territory, fulfilling a pledge that if the Israelis strike inside central Beirut, that Hezbollah will strike Israel,” he said.
Earlier in the day, the Israeli military said that one barrage of strikes had hit 20 targets in the city in just 120 seconds.
Seven people were killed and 37 others wounded in Israeli attacks on a Beirut building housing displaced people, the National News Agency reported, citing Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health.
“The Israeli strike on the Nweiri area in Beirut destroyed a four-storey building housing displaced people,” Lebanon’s official news agency said.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said earlier that Israeli strikes had killed at least 31 people on Monday, mostly in the south of the country.
A new push for a Gaza ceasefire
Reporting from the White House, Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett noted that the latest ceasefire announcement comes in the waning days of Biden’s term.
Republican President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office on January 20.
The Biden administration has repeatedly sought to broker a ceasefire agreement in Gaza but has come up short. It has repeatedly refused to leverage US military aid to Israel in its push for peace.
“The fact is [Tuesday’s ceasefire] falls short of the Biden administration’s goal, in that it does not in any way speak to the conflict in Gaza,” Halkett said.
Still, during the address, Biden pledged to “make another push with Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Israel and others to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza” in his final days in office.
He also said he would work towards forging new normalisation agreements between Israel and several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, a goal which had been set back amid the war in Gaza.