Security cabinet member signals Lebanon deal uncertain, amid pressure to oppose it
As northern mayors cast impending 60-day truce with Hezbollah as ‘surrender deal,’ Likud minister Dichter vows to oppose agreement if it is ‘copy paste’ of UN resolution from 2006
As news broke Monday that Israel was expected to approve a 60-day ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah in Lebanon the following day, reactions poured in from across the country and the political spectrum, with many speaking out against the deal.
The security cabinet was set to meet to discuss the deal on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m., one of the minister’s offices told The Times of Israel. The meeting is scheduled to last at least until 9 p.m.
The text of the ceasefire was finalized Monday, according to a report on Channel 12, which added that “something drastic” would have to happen for the ceasefire to fall apart before the meeting.
But Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter of the ruling Likud party, a member of the security cabinet, said he had not yet learned sufficient details about the deal with Hezbollah to decide how he will vote on it.
In a post on X meant “to calm and give clarity” to residents of the north, Dichter said he would not back the deal if it was a “copy-paste” of the UN Security Resolution 1701 that ended the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and largely went unimplemented.
“That deal prepared Hezbollah ahead of the third Lebanon war, which it opened on October 8 to help the Hamas murders in Gaza,” added Dichter, referring to the date in 2023 when the Iran-backed Lebanese terror group began attacking northern communities and military posts, a day after its ally Hamas’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel.
Mayors of cities and towns in northern Israel that have been most affected by the conflict with Hezbollah — some 60,000 residents have been displaced for over a year — responded to the developments by slamming the government for capitulating to the Lebanese terror group.
Metula Mayor David Azoulay denounced the pending agreement as “a surrender deal” during an interview with Channel 12 news.
Kiryat Shmona Mayor Avichai Stern wrote on Facebook that “this agreement hastens [a repeat of] October 7 in the north and this cannot happen.”
“I don’t understand how we went from total victory to total surrender,” he added, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s slogan for the war. “What will our residents return to? To a destroyed city without security or a horizon? Someone here has lost it.”
Both Metula and Kiryat Shmona are near the border with Lebanon and are among the communities most devastated by the near-daily Hezbollah attacks on the north over the past year.
Azoulay and Stern were among the northern town mayors on a Zoom call that Negev and the Galilee Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf held on Monday evening to discuss the looming ceasefire deal.
After hearing repeated criticism of the deal from the mayors on the call, Wassrlauf pledged to “do everything to prevent this agreement.” The far-right minister is only an observer on the security cabinet where the vast majority of ministers are expected to vote in favor of the deal.
National Unity party leader Benny Gantz, a centrist opposition politician who joined an emergency government last year, but left it in June, called on Netanyahu to publicize the details of the agreement, writing on X that “the northern residents and the soldiers and citizens of Israel have the right to know.”
Gantz added that Israel should start “acting powerfully” against assets of the Lebanese state, since its national government “gives a free hand to Hezbollah.”
Some far-right members of the government announced that they were opposed to the deal, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who called it a “grave mistake.”
However, Ben Gvir stopped short of issuing an ultimatum to Netanyahu that he would pull his party from the coalition and collapse the government, as he has when a ceasefire in Gaza was seen as close to being signed.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Monday that “no agreement, if signed, will be worth the paper it is signed on,” saying that the deal “doesn’t interest” him.
“What interests me is that we have kicked [Hezbollah’s] ass, and we will continue to do so,” he added.
Yisrael Beytenu party chairman Avigdor Liberman, of the opposition, also opposed the deal, saying that “the agreement with Lebanon is terrible from Israel’s point of view. I say to the residents of the north: you have nothing to return home to.”
According to Channel 12, the IDF told Netanyahu that the time is right for a ceasefire in Lebanon, citing a close Netanyahu aide.
The army reportedly said that it has achieved its goals of destroying Hezbollah’s infrastructure along the border and removing the possibility of a raid into northern Israel by pushing Hezbollah back, while drastically reducing its rocket arsenal.
But if the efforts to achieve a ceasefire collapse, the IDF said it has plans for an expansion of its operation in Lebanon.
Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah began the day after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, when the Palestinian terror group invaded southern Israel and killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 251 hostages to Gaza. Of those, 97 remain in captivity.
The following day, Hezbollah began its attacks on the north, forcing tens of thousands of residents of northern Israel to abandon their homes for fear the Shiite terror group would launch a similar invasion.
Israel stepped up its offensive on Hezbollah in Lebanon in late September, launching extensive strikes and operations that took out most of the group’s leadership, including its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Israel then launched a ground operation in southern Lebanon with the aim of clearing Hezbollah strongholds in the area and making it safe for evacuated residents of northern Israel to return to their homes.
