Lebanon ceasefire talk whips up widespread opposition from Netanyahu allies, critics
Lapid among few to offer even lukewarm backing for US-French proposal for 21-day pause in fight against Hezbollah, but urges it be shortened; northern leader calls idea ‘fatal mistake’
Hardline government ministers, local leaders in northern Israel and some opposition politicians urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reject a brewing ceasefire proposal aimed at halting several days of devastating airstrikes on the Hezbollah terror group Thursday.
With a US official and Israeli media claiming that a decision on an internationally backed deal could be imminent, even Opposition Leader Yair Lapid offered only milquetoast support for an agreement, while other dovish politicians largely remained silent on the issue.
Netanyahu was en route Thursday morning to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, where diplomatic efforts to end some of the heaviest fighting on the Israel-Lebanon border in decades were expected to dominate talks.
After landing, his office released a statement seemingly pushing back against the idea that it was close to agreeing to the US- and France-led proposal for an immediate 21-day pause.
“The prime minister hasn’t even responded to it,” the statement read, calling reports that the army had been instructed to dial back its air campaign in the meantime “the opposite of the truth.”
Foreign Minister Israel Katz was more blunt, asserting that “there will be no ceasefire in the north.”
“We will continue to fight the Hezbollah terror group with full force until victory and the return of residents of the north to their homes safely,” added Katz, who is currently standing in for Netanyahu but who doesn’t appear to have authority to make operational decisions on the prosecution of the war.
The comments came after a morning that saw Netanyahu’s hawkish partners, northerners and others vociferously reject any halt in Israel’s air campaign, which is aimed at degrading Hezbollah’s capability to threaten Israel’s north after almost a year of near-daily rocket and drone attacks. Instead, they prodded the premier to push ahead until the Iran-backed group was sufficiently pulverized.
“The campaign in the north should end in one scenario — crushing Hezbollah, denying its ability to harm the residents of the north,” tweeted Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who heads the far-right Religious Zionism party.
Smotrich and others warned that a potential three-week ceasefire would give Hezbollah enough time to regroup, after the Lebanese-based organization suffered what Israel Defense Forces officials have described as significant losses in recent days.
The concern was echoed by Lapid, leader of the centrist Yesh Atid party, who was one of the few public voices offering any backing for a pause in fighting.
“The State of Israel should announce this morning that it accepts the Biden-Macron ceasefire proposal, but only for seven days so as not to allow Hezbollah to restore its command and control systems,” he said on X.
He said any deal must include an agreement pushing Hezbollah away from Lebanon’s southern border with Israel, allowing some 70,000 residents of towns near the border who have been forced from their homes for over 11 months to return and shifting attention back to moribund negotiations for a hostage deal and ceasefire in Gaza.
Hezbollah began firing into Israel on October 8 in support of Hamas following the Gaza-based terror group’s onslaught of southern Israel a day earlier. Domestic pressure for Israel to take action to end the attacks has ramped up in recent months as fighting in Gaza has winded down.
A ceasefire now “would be a fatal mistake,” Matte Asher Regional Council head Moshe Davidovich told the Ynet news site Thursday.
“This is a present we must not give Nasrallah. It would cause fatalities,” added Davidovich, who heads the Conflict Zone Forum, an umbrella group for northern councils that have for months urged the government to launch a major attack on Hezbollah to stop the bombardments. He said an agreement could be possible in several weeks if the country becomes safer.
A poll in August by the Israel Democracy Institute found two in three Jewish Israelis backed stepped-up attacks on Hezbollah, with nearly half of respondents supporting a “deep offensive” in Lebanon.
In public, Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and other leaders have insisted that Israel prefers a diplomatic solution to the northern border crisis, even as an escalation in fighting over the past several days has raised the specter of an expanding regional war, prompting a flurry of diplomatic activity to pare back tensions.
Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon told reporters late Wednesday that Israel would welcome a ceasefire and preferred a diplomatic solution.
“We are grateful for all those who are making a sincere effort with diplomacy to avoid escalation, to avoid a full war,” Danon said, but added that if talks failed: “We will use all means at our disposal, in accordance with international law, to achieve our aims.”
Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party pooh-poohed the diplomatic scramble as “dangerous hypocrisy.”
“Whoever did not know how to restrain Hezbollah during a whole year of incessant shelling… should not preach to us when we fight back,” he said.
His party, which has threatened to pull out of Netanyahu’s coalition if it halts fighting in Gaza, called “an urgent meeting” Thursday morning to discuss the issue.
Many within Netanyahu’s Likud party also spoke out against a potential deal, including Culture Minister Miki Zohar, who warned agreeing to a ceasefire would constitute “a serious error that endangers Israel’s major security achievements in recent days.”
Party members also threatened to reconsider support for the government’s amended 2024 budget when it comes to a vote Sunday, the Kan public broadcaster reported.
Opposition hawks also spoke out, including New Hope party leader Gideon Sa’ar, who recently rejected a reported offer to replace Gallant as defense minister.
“Only Hezbollah will benefit” from a temporary ceasefire, he said Thursday, rejecting Lapid’s backing for a shorter pause.
Most opposition members refrained from taking any public position.
“I don’t want to talk about the management of the war or a ceasefire. Let’s talk about the economy,” Yesh Atid MK Vladimir Beliak offered bluntly on X.
MK Meirav Cohen, a Yesh Atid MK, was one of the few liberal opposition politicians to offer any support for a ceasefire.
“We have strong momentum in the fighting and the other side is in shambles,” she tweeted. “And still, if it’s possible to achieve our war goals without continuing the fighting, that’s always preferred.”
Violence continued to wrack both sides on Thursday, with Hezbollah firing dozens of rockets at Acre in Israel’s north and airstrikes pounding areas of southern Lebanon where Israel says the group is hiding weapons.
Over 600 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel began launching intense airstrikes Monday, though the IDF says many of them were Hezbollah members. In Israel, volleys of hundreds of rockets have caused widespread damage, but few serious casualties.
In the northern border city of Kiryat Shmona, which has been largely emptied out over the past year amid a steady stream of rocket and missile attacks, Mayor Avichai Stern complained that talk of a ceasefire was premature.
“This shows the hypocrisy of the entire country. Now that the state is finally fulfilling its basic duty and defending us, they are talking now about a ceasefire,” he said, according to the Walla news site.
“An agreement won’t bring back Kiryat Shmona,” he added. “The talk of a ceasefire makes us feel like we were in this mess for an entire year for nothing.”
