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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would bring a US-brokered proposal for a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon to his government for approval as soon as Tuesday evening.
In a televised address, Netanyahu said he would put “a ceasefire outline” to ministers “this evening”. He did not say how long the truce would last, noting “the length of the ceasefire depends on what happens in Lebanon”.
“If Hezbollah violates the agreement and attempts to rearm, we will strike,” he warned.
Key Israel backer the United States has led ceasefire efforts for Lebanon alongside France.
“In full coordination with the United States, we are maintaining full military freedom of action,” Netanyahu said, outlining the seven-front war Israel says it faces in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Iran.
Even as Netanyahu spoke about the ceasefire, the Israeli military carried out multiple strikes on heart of Beirut while the army said some 15 projectiles had entered Israeli airspace from Lebanon.
The war in Lebanon escalated after nearly a year of limited cross-border exchanges of fire begun by Hezbollah, which said it was acting in support of Hamas after its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the war in Gaza.
The war has killed at least 3,823 people in Lebanon since October 2023, according to the health ministry, most of them since September.
On the Israeli side, the hostilities have killed at least 82 soldiers and 47 civilians, authorities say.
Netanyahu said the ceasefire would allow Israel to focus on “the Iranian threat” and ramp up its fight against Hamas in Gaza.
“With Hezbollah out of the picture, Hamas is left on its own,” he said.
“We will increase our pressure on Hamas and that will help us in our sacred mission of releasing our hostages.”
During last year’s Hamas attack, militants took 251 hostages, of whom 97 are still held in Gaza, including 34 the army has declared dead.
– ‘Historic mistake’ –
Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a member of Israel’s security cabinet, called the proposal “a historic mistake” and said he would oppose it.
“This is not a ceasefire. It’s a return to the concept of silence for silence, and we’ve already seen where it leads,” he wrote in a post on X. “This agreement does not meet the goal of the war — to return the residents of the north safely home.”
Israel has said more than 60,000 people have been forced from their homes in the north for more than a year by the threat of Hezbollah rocket fire.
“Under Netanyahu’s watch, the greatest disaster in our history occurred. No agreement with Hezbollah will erase the negligence,” opposition leader and former prime minister Yair Lapid said in a statement.
“We urgently need to make a hostage deal and bring home the citizens who were abandoned,” he said.
Speaking on Israel’s Channel 12, David Azoulay, mayor of Israel’s northernmost town, Metula, slammed Netanyahu for a deal that he said would not bring long-lasting peace to the region.
He said he refused to attend a meeting with the prime minister to discuss the ceasefire, saying, “I will not serve as a backdrop for decisions that have already been made by one person, I will not be an extra in Netanyahu’s playground.”
Channel 12 also published the results of a flash poll showing that based on their understanding of the ceasefire proposal, 37 percent of Israelis support the deal, 32 percent oppose it and 31 percent said they were unsure.
