A Precarious, One-Sided Truce in Lebanon
On November 26, Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement for a sixty-day truce, during which Israel and Hezbollah say they will withdraw from the area of Lebanon south of the Litani River.
The agreement was based on the terms of U.N. Security Council resolution 1701, which ended the previous Israeli assault on Lebanon in 2006. The truce is being enforced by 5,000 to 10,000 Lebanese troops and the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), a 10,000-strong peacekeeping force that has operated in that area since 1978 and includes troops from forty-six countries.
The truce had broad international support, including from Iran and Hamas, and Israel and Hezbollah were ready to end a war that neither of them could win. Effective resistance by Hezbollah prevented Israeli forces from advancing far into Lebanon, but they killed nearly 4,000 people and wounded more than 16,000 in an operation marked by widespread destruction and civilian deaths.
People all over Lebanon welcomed this relief from Israeli bombing that destroyed their towns and neighborhoods and caused thousands of casualties. In Beirut, people immediately started returning to their homes.
In the south, the Israeli military warned residents on both sides of the border not to return yet. It declared a new buffer zone, not part of the terms of the truce agreement, that includes sixty villages north of the Israel-Lebanon border, and warned that it will attack Lebanese civilians who return to that area. Despite these warnings, thousands of displaced people have been returning to south Lebanon, often to find their homes and villages in ruins.
People returning to the south still display the yellow flags of Hezbollah. A flag flying over the ruins of Tyre has the words “Made in the U.S.A.” written across it, a reminder that the Lebanese people know very well who made the bombs that have killed and maimed so many thousands of them.
In the first days of the ceasefire, there were already many reports of truce violations. Israel shot and wounded two journalists just hours after the truce went into effect, and then, two days into the ceasefire, Israel attacked five towns near the border with tanks, fired artillery across the border, and conducted airstrikes on southern Lebanon. One U.N. peacekeeper told CNN that Israel had violated the truce “roughly 100 times.” On December 2, Hezbollah retaliated with mortar fire in the disputed Shebaa Farms area, to which Israel responded with heavier strikes that killed eleven people in two villages.
A U.S. “side letter” added to the truce agreement granted Israel the right to strike at will whenever it believes Hezbollah is violating the truce, giving it what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called “complete military freedom of action” and making this a precarious and one-sided truce at best.
The prospect for a full withdrawal of both Israeli and Hezbollah forces in sixty days seems slim, since Hezbollah has built large weapons stockpiles in the south that it will not want to abandon and Netanyahu himself has warned that the truce “could be short.”
There is also the danger of confrontation between Hezbollah and the Lebanese military, raising the specter of another bloody civil war in Lebanon, the last of which killed an estimated 150,000 people between 1975 and 1990.
The truce agreement was brokered by the United States and France, a former colonial power in Lebanon that now plays a leading role in UNIFIL. Israel initially rejected France as a negotiating partner, but relented when French President Emmanuel Macron’s government agreed not to enforce the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Netanyahu justified the truce to Israelis by saying that it will allow Israeli forces to focus on Gaza and Iran. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the extreme Zionist security minister, was the only member of the Israeli cabinet to vote against the truce.
While there were hopes that the truce in Lebanon might set the stage for a ceasefire in Gaza, Israel continues to kill civilians and destroy infrastructure there. Satellite images show Israel carrying out new mass demolitions of hundreds of buildings in northern Gaza to build a new road, or boundary, between Gaza City and North Gaza. This may be a new border imposed by Israel to separate the northernmost 17 percent of Gaza from the rest of the Gaza Strip, which would make it easier for Israel to expel Gazan residents and prevent them from returning, steal land in northern Gaza for Israeli settlers, and squeeze the desperate, starving survivors in Gaza into an even smaller area.
Elsewhere in the region, Israel’s genocide in Gaza and war on its neighbors have led to widespread anti-Israel and anti-U.S. resistance.
Where the United States once influenced Arab rulers through weapons deals and military alliances, the Arab and Muslim world is coalescing around a position that views Israel’s behavior as unacceptable and Iran as a threatened neighbor rather than an enemy. Unconditional U.S. support for Israel risks permanently downgrading U.S. relations with long-time allies like Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.
Yemen’s Houthi government has maintained a blockade of the Red Sea, using missiles and drones against Israeli-linked ships heading for the Israeli port of Eilat or the Suez Canal. The Yemenis have defeated a U.S.-led naval task force sent to break the blockade and have reduced shipping through the Suez Canal by at least two-thirds, forcing shipping companies to reroute most ships all the way around Africa. The port of Eilat filed for bankruptcy in July after it docked only one ship in several months.
Other resistance forces have conducted attacks on U.S. military bases in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, and U.S. forces have retaliated in a low-grade tit-for-tat war. The Iraqi government has strongly condemned U.S. and Israeli attacks in Iraq as violations of its sovereignty. Attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria have flared up again in recent months, while Iraqi resistance forces have also launched drone attacks on Israel.
After Israel raised the attacks launched from Iraq in the U.N. Security Council, the Arab League held an emergency meeting in Cairo on November 26, where it voted unanimously to support Iraq and condemn Israeli threats.
U.S.-Iraqi talks in September drew up a plan for hundreds of U.S. troops to leave Iraq in 2025 and for all 2,500 to be gone within two years. The U.S. has failed to follow through with previous withdrawal plans, but the days of these very unwelcome U.S. bases must surely be numbered.
Recent meetings of Arab and Muslim states have forged a growing sense of unity around a rejection of U.S. proposals to normalize relations with Israel and a new solidarity with Palestine and Iran. At a meeting of Islamic nations in Riyadh on November 11, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the first time publicly called the Israeli massacre in Gaza a genocide.
Arab and Muslim countries recognize that previous divisions, such as between Iran and its mostly Shiite allies on one hand and Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-majority countries on the other, left them vulnerable to exploitation by the United States and Israel, and contributed to the current crisis in Palestine and the risk of a major regional war that now looms over them.
On November 29, Saudi and Western officials told Reuters that Saudi Arabia has given up on a new military alliance with the United States, which would have included normalizing relations with Israel, and is now opting for a more limited U.S. weapons deal.
The Saudis had hoped for a treaty that included a U.S. commitment to defend them, like U.S. treaties with Japan and South Korea. That would require confirmation by the U.S. Senate, which would demand Saudi recognition of Israel in return. But the Saudis can no longer consider recognizing Israel without a viable plan for Palestinian statehood, which Israel rejects.
On the other hand, Saudi relations with Iran are steadily improving since they restored relations eighteen months ago with diplomatic help from China and Iraq. At a meeting with new Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian in Qatar on October 3, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan declared, “We seek to close the page of differences between the two countries forever and work towards the resolution of our issues and expansion of our relations like two friendly and brotherly states.”
Prince Faisal highlighted the “very sensitive and critical” situation in the region due to Israel’s “aggressions” against Gaza and Lebanon and its attempts to expand the conflict. He said Saudi Arabia trusted Iran’s “wisdom and discernment” in managing the situation to restore calm and peace.
If Saudi Arabia and its neighbors can make peace with Iran, what will the consequences be for Israel’s illegal, genocidal occupation of Palestine, which has been enabled and encouraged by decades of unconditional U.S. military and diplomatic support?
On December 2, Trump wrote on Truth Social that if the hostages were not released by the time of his inauguration, there would be “ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East.” “Those responsible,” he warned, “will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America.”
Trump and many of his acolytes exemplify the Western arrogance and lust for imperial power that lies at the root of this crisis. More threats and more destruction are not the answer. Trump has had good relations with the dictatorial rulers of the Gulf states. If he is willing to listen to them, he will realize that there is no solution to the crisis in the Middle East without freedom, self-determination, and sovereignty in their own land for the people of Palestine. That is the path to peace, if he will take it.