Talk is stirring of a forthcoming ceasefire in Lebanon, which would set a roadmap for the implementation of UN Resolution 1701 that ended the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
The UN resolution mandated UNIFIL and the Lebanese army as the exclusive armed presence south of Lebanon’s Litani River - excluding Hezbollah and Israel. But neither side has ever completely enforced its terms.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, said on Wednesday in an interview with the Lebanese TV channel, Al-Jadeed, that he was “cautiously optimistic” a ceasefire could take force “in the coming hours or days”.
However, despite the recent wave of optimism, analysts say a deal remains unlikely. “We are far from an end game in terms of a package deal that both sides can agree upon,” Nicholas Blanford, a Hezbollah expert and non-resident fellow of the Atlantic Council, told The New Arab.
“The Israelis aren’t in the mood to make any compromises at the moment, which would satisfy the Lebanese side, Hezbollah in particular,” he stated.
The Israeli public radio channel, KAN, on Wednesday leaked what is said was a draft ceasefire proposal for Lebanon, urging Israel and Lebanon to implement UN resolutions 1701 and 1559.
The draft proposal states that Israel would withdraw its forces from south Lebanon in a phased manner within seven days, during which time the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) would deploy to the area, in coordination with the US and UN peacekeeping troops.
The proposal also sets an initial 60-day period for Lebanon to “dismantle and confiscate all military assets, arms, and infrastructure of all non-state armed groups [including Hezbollah]...”
However, the US responded to the leaked ceasefire proposal, saying, “There are many reports and drafts circulating. They do not reflect the current state of negotiations”.
US special envoy Amos Hochstein and US President Joe Biden's Middle East adviser Brett McGurk are reportedly scheduled to visit Israel on Thursday to discuss Gaza, Lebanon, and other “regional matters”.
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Hezbollah's change of tone
Some analysts suggest that the heavy losses Hezbollah has suffered as a result of Israel’s pager attacks and subsequent severe escalation on 23 September, including the assassination of leader Hassan Nasrallah, have pushed the group to be more willing to accept a ceasefire - unconditional to a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
Previously, Hezbollah was adamant that its attacks from Lebanon would only stop when Israel ceased hostilities in Gaza.
“Hezbollah has expressed flexibility in separating Gaza from south Lebanon,” Mohanad Hage Ali, a fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, told The New Arab. He said that while their fight began as “a solidarity campaign [with Palestinians in Gaza], now they’re in a war to defend Lebanon against the Israeli aggression - which means the ceasefire is no longer attached to the Gaza Strip”.
Lebanon’s parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri - the main interlocutor in the ceasefire negotiations and chosen to speak on behalf of Hezbollah - affirmed soon after Israel’s escalation, on 30 September, that Lebanon was “committed to a ceasefire with Israel and the implementation of UN Resolution 1701,” which he said Hezbollah’s leader at the time, Hassan Nasrallah, had agreed on.
“Hezbollah is now saying through Nabih Berri that they’re ready to implement the resolution [1701],” Hassan Kotob, a political analyst with the Lebanese Center for Research and Consulting, told The New Arab.
He noted that “at the beginning of the war Hezbollah refused to submit to the resolution”, but now as their losses mount, they may be “ready to submit”.
On Wednesday, Berri emphasised Lebanon’s commitment to an “unchanged” application of UN Resolution 1701 in an interview with the pan-Arab daily, Ashraq al-Awsat. “There is no intention to change the text of resolution 1701. What has been written has been written, and we are not ready to change even one letter,” Berri said.
Hezbollah’s new leader, Naim Qassem, also said on Wednesday that the Lebanese militant group would continue to fight until it is offered ceasefire terms it deems acceptable.
Strengthened army presence
Blanford, from the Atlantic Council, said that the Israelis want a deal “tougher” than what is currently set under UN Resolution 1701, while the Lebanese government - as reflected in Berri’s statement - wants to adhere to the original version of Resolution 1701.
“The Israelis want a mechanism to verify that Hezbollah is really standing by 1701,” Blanford said. “Its number one priority is to ensure that Hezbollah is not in a position to do the same thing along their northern border [as Hamas did on October 7],” he added.
Hezbollah has been able to maintain a covert, but significant, underground military presence in southern Lebanon since 2006, which became increasingly apparent over the past four or five years, Blanford noted. The Israelis have also frequently crossed into Lebanese airspace, territorial waters, and over its border.
Blanford suggested that a “main element” of a “revamped” resolution would be to strengthen the Lebanese army’s presence at the Israel-Lebanon border, which he said Hezbollah has not rejected.
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“I do get a sense that Hezbollah would accept the deployment of Lebanese troops along the [UN demarcated] Blue Line and that they would not rebuild the military infrastructure they had before,” Blanford said. “I think they can sell it to their constituency as simply saying that, ‘The Lebanese army has to be the first line of defence and then we are the strategic reserve’.”
The leaked ceasefire draft proposal calls to steadily increase the number of LAF personnel deployed in southern Lebanon to achieve a total of 10,000 soldiers over time.
A Lebanese official quoted by the Associated Press on Wednesday also said that the roadmap to the UN Resolution would include boosting the number of UN peacekeepers from 10,000 to 15,000 and the number of Lebanese troops from 4,000 to 15,000.
Who would implement it?
Hanin Ghaddar, a fellow at the DC-based Washington Institute, told The New Arab that UN Resolution 1701 is a “good resolution, but the problem is there’s no one on the ground who is capable of implementing it”.
She said that the Lebanese army was the only authority that could implement the resolution, notably supervising Hezbollah’s disarmament, but failed because the Lebanese government was responding to Iran and Hezbollah's interests.
“The problem over the past years is that 1701 has never been implemented because the government was not independent,” Ghaddar stated.
Hence, Ghaddar stressed the importance of Lebanon urgently electing a president to facilitate the “implementation of 1701”.
Lebanon’s political system is deadlocked, the country now going on over two years without a president. Berri has said that the election of a president cannot happen while the country is at war, although demonstrated some leniency in his position early this month. Meanwhile, some politicians opposed to Hezbollah are calling for elections.
But Blanford said that “the issue of the presidency” is irrelevant to the army’s role in the implementation of UN Resolution 1701.
“If Hezbollah agrees to withdraw north of the Litani”, the army and UNIFIL, and possibly new international observers, would be the institutions to ensure Hezbollah does not slip back south - but no force would militarily force Hezbollah to disarm and move north, he added.
“Setting the army against Hezbollah is tantamount to a civil war and it won’t be accepted by the army nor the Lebanese political echelon,” Blanford stated.
'Dangerous game'
While discussion of a ceasefire circulates, Israel continues to bombard the country with heavy airstrikes - on Wednesday issuing an evacuation order for the entire historic city of Baalbeck, in the north, with 80,000 residents.
“Hezbollah is playing a dangerous game of who will scream first, with an enemy that is capable of inflicting much more damage on the organisation and its community than previously thought,” Hage Ali, from the Carnegie Middle East Center, said.
As a result of the unprecedented US support for Israel’s war campaign, Hezbollah has not been able to resist Israeli forces to the extent they did in 2006, Hage Ali said. “Hezbollah is unable to bridge the gap [between itself and Israel’s defeats] in this time frame and they’ll likely lose in the negotiation process because of this,” he added.
“Further down the road, Netanyahu may face a situation where he either goes to the negotiation table… or maybe he’ll double down,” Blanford said.
He noted that Israel could shift to directly targeting civilian infrastructure, which he said Israel has so far avoided, a move which would bring the hostile neighbours into a full-scale war.
“The biggest strategic blunder Hezbollah has made in its 42-year-history was opening its war front and tying it to the war in Gaza, which denied them a face-saving off ramp when the border clashes began to escalate,” Blanford stated. “They’re paying for it now.”
Hanna Davis is a freelance journalist reporting on politics, foreign policy, and humanitarian affairs.
Follow her on Twitter: @hannadavis341