Newsweek: Will the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah hold?

A ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah began on November 27, 2024, with an agreement brokered by the United States and France that called for a 60-day halt to violence, aiming to end 14 months of hostilities that had inflicted heavy casualties on both sides.

Newsweek magazine said that the agreement, which will be supervised by a US-led multinational committee, includes Hezbollah withdrawing its fighters north of the Litani River and Israel gradually withdrawing its forces from southern Lebanon, with the deployment of Lebanese army forces.

During this war, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah was killed, the party's military infrastructure was severely damaged, and there were human losses, as well as the displacement of a number of residents in northern Israel.

Hezbollah needs rest

To shed light on this issue, Newsweek reached out to regional experts to assess the prospects for a ceasefire and its implications for future stability in the Middle East, given that many Lebanese who are keen on peace are concerned about the possibility of its collapse and the renewal of war.

Yezid Sayigh, a historian at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said he doubted that Hezbollah would undermine the cease-fire because it desperately needs a break after the massive Israeli offensive. He said the main factor affecting the durability of the cease-fire may be Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political calculations, because there could come a moment when he feels it is more in his interest to undermine the cease-fire than to maintain it.

Sayigh said Netanyahu faces significant domestic opposition to the deal, and may therefore have to maneuver to keep his far-right partners in place in order to secure his term as prime minister and delay facing trial on criminal charges.

“I really can’t understand why Netanyahu would accept a ceasefire with Hezbollah unless he received the message that US President-elect Donald Trump wants to stop the war before his inauguration, and if so the balance is tilted toward maintaining the ceasefire unless Hezbollah makes that impossible,” he continued.

The deal will hold.

For his part, Henry J. Barkey, a professor of international relations, said he believed the ceasefire would hold, with some violations, and summarized the reasons for its holding as being that Hezbollah had inflicted the greatest possible damage, the Israeli army was exhausted, and Netanyahu was desperate to show tangible success in returning refugees from northern Israel to their homes.

James Gilvin, a researcher in the Department of History at the University of California, believes that there is a very good chance that the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah will continue, because the party was a reluctant participant in the Israeli war in support of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) as a member of the Axis of Resistance, and it seemed to him that bringing death and destruction to Lebanon was an unrealistic and unpopular step in light of the economic crisis the country is going through.

As for Israel, Gelvin believes that it has achieved its goal of pushing Hezbollah back from its border, in addition to the return of 60,000 Israelis in the north to their homes at any cost, and the Israeli army will be freed up to deal with the southern front, which has always been the one that really matters to Israel, which will spare Netanyahu a political minefield by not having to recruit hardline Israelis.

Source: Newsweek