The agreement between Israel and Hezbollah says what it is

The Israel-Lebanese War in the Balkans, and the Security and Security Continuum of the Middle East: Israel and the United Nations

Scott Neuman reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Lauren Frayer reported from Lebanon, while Daniel Estrin contributed from Tel Aviv.

“Urgent work must begin to ensure the peace continues.” Children and families must always be able to return to their homes safely, especially in a shelter.

In a statement on the ceasefire, UNICEF said it hopes the agreement “will bring an end to the war which has killed more than 240 children, injured around 1,400, and upended the lives of countless others.”

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, says the fighting has limited access to southern Lebanon, where more than 188,000 people live in more than 1,000 government-assigned collective shelters, many of which have reached maximum capacity. “Heavy bombardments have been devastating for public services and infrastructure,” the agency said.

An Israeli military spokesperson warned Lebanese civilians on Thursday not to return to certain villages strung out across a marked territorial line close to the Israeli border, saying in a statement posted on social media that “anyone who moves south of this line – puts himself in danger.”

Iran, which has been the most supportive of both Hamas and Hezbollah in Gaza, said after the deal was brokered that it welcomed the end of aggression against Lebanon. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei emphasized Tehran’s “firm support for the Lebanese government, nation and resistance.”

There are worries in Gaza as well. Wala Hanuna, 34, a Palestinian displaced by Israel’s nearly 14-month military offensive there, worried that the Israeli military would now be free to wreak more destruction on the territory. “We read the news that the Israeli army fighting in Lebanon will go now to Gaza,” she said. With no one thinking how we’ll get out of this war, maybe it will last another year.

The President Biden and the President of France said the deal will stop fighting in Lebanon, and protect Israel from the threat of Hezbollah. They said it “will create the conditions to restore lasting calm and allow residents in both countries to return safely to their homes” along the border.

Lebanon’s government is required to prevent Hezbollah and any other armed groups that operate in Lebanon from conducting combat operations against Israel, while the Israeli military is expected to end its offensive actions against targets inside Lebanon, whether civil or military. The right to self defense is guaranteed under international law, and this does not preclude either the Lebanon or Israel from doing so.

The Foreign Ministry of Egypt stated that the ceasefire will contribute to the beginning of the de-escalation phase in the region. It called on Israel to allow full access to humanitarian aid without obstacles in order to stop the unjustifiable violations in the West Bank.

“If Israel is not satisfied, they’ll take action on their own,” he says.

The enforcement will be the focus, says Lipner, a Jerusalem-based Middle East expert at the Atlantic Council. “They’re telegraphing that there will not be any exceptions [as] in the past.”

The move to regulate the sale of weapons and military equipment in Lebanon was made to prevent militant groups like Hezbollah from rearming and reestablishing their military capacities. Under the agreement between Lebanon and the United States of America, there will be oversight for the manufacture and production of weapons systems inside Lebanon.

The truce, brokered by the United States and France, went into effect at 4 a.m. local time on Wednesday. Fighting, however, continued up to the zero hour, with Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon far into the night.

“There is a good deal here that had to come because of the international pressure. He said they have somewhere to go back to. He said the people of southern Lebanon have nowhere to return after they were devastated by Israel.

Orna Peretz, an Israeli displaced from Kiryat Shmona, a town less than a mile from the Israel-Lebanon border, told NPR he thinks Hezbollah — founded during Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war — has been taught a lesson “it never endured in its entire lifetime.”

Israel is not allowing its residents to come back to their homes in the border area. Israel will not start the process of returning Israelis until there is a 60- to 90-day period for restoring buildings and institutions damaged by Hezbollah fire.

In southern Lebanon, Patricia Taleb, 24, was driving Wednesday to reach the home she was forced to abandon earlier. “We know that this is the end days of the war. We know that ultimately it’s going to be OK,” she told NPR.

Many Lebanese already began trying to return to their southern villages, despite Israeli military warnings not to do so yet, while Israeli troops are still deployed.

According to the director of the Conflict Resolution and Track II Dialogues Program at the Middle East Institute, Israel achieved its military objectives by eliminating Hezbollah infrastructure. Slim says it’s destroyed on the border. They have wiped out their military command council and their political leadership, top senior political leadership. So these are severe blows to Hezbollah, which is going to take a long, long time to recover from.”

TEL AVIV, Israel, and BEIRUT — Celebratory gunfire rang out in the Lebanese capital Beirut overnight Tuesday to mark the start of a ceasefire between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon to end almost 14 months of fighting.

The deal ends with a promise by the United States and France that they will lead to help develop and lift Lebanon’s economy as well as commitments to ensure civilians can return safely to their homes and land.

This week’s agreement stipulates that the U.S.-backed Lebanese army will have full control to monitor the country’s border crossings to prevent unauthorized arms entries, and confiscate other weapons or military systems it locates in the area south of the Litani River, around 20 miles north of the de-facto border between the two nations.

Assad’s forces were supported by Hezbollah during the years-long Syrian civil war, which continues in pockets of that country’s north. In recent months, Israeli aircraft have repeatedly targeted locations inside Syria that commanders say have been involved in this smuggling, and right up until the ceasefire took effect on Wednesday strikes continued on sites inside Lebanon tied to that cross-border trade.

“Deploying the same Lebanese army to areas where it – by the way – was before, you might be ramping up the numbers a little bit,” says Peter Harling, director of Beirut-based research organization, the Synaps Network. “But for now, there’s absolutely no basis to believe that this will have an effect in reality.”

The fact that the army will take nominal control of the country’s south, as well as the fact that these proposals are not part of the agreement, means that Hezbollah has won, according to Dr. Hariri’s advisor in the UK. The very fact that Lebanon and Hezbollah were able to cause this is a huge victory in itself. Amos Hochstein has put forward a number of proposed amendments over the last two months.

Amos Hochstein, the United States lead envoy to Lebanon, had recently suggested to both Israel and Lebanon that a multinational force separate from the United Nations would be needed to oversee the region’s security.

The U.S. and France will work with other NATO member countries like Italy that have created a military technical committee for Lebanon to quickly move 10,000 army troops to southern Lebanon. The committee, known by its acronym MTC4L, began infantry training courses over this past summer, and the U.S. and France have vowed to expand international support for further training and recruitment.

But having reviewed this week’s agreement, Noe anticipates it is unlikely to function as well as the original one did in the late 1990s, because the Israelis will be able to define an “offensive” action on their own terms. Noe believes that Israeli military strikes will continue in Lebanon in the coming period.

Nicholas Noe, director of the Beirut Exchange Foundation, says that an oversight system was set up after a previous Israeli incursion into Lebanon. It was said that it was successful at reducing civilian conflicts in the current conflict between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, something that will be important when large numbers of internally displaced people return to this region.

The United Nations Security Council resolution number 1701, passed in 2006 at the end of the last large-scale conflict, was central to the deal. The weakened and at times precarious nature of Lebanon’s state remains a key challenge, even as Nabih Berri, the country’s powerful parliamentary speaker, said Thursday that there would be a vote to choose a new president.

The leaders on both sides have been trying to portray this ceasefire as a success, despite the fact that many observers have questioned such assessments.

The Israeli military said Thursday one of its aircraft struck a storage site for Hezbollah rockets, one of the first large-scale skirmishes that could reoccur in the coming months as Hezbollah and Israel withdraw to the respective positions agreed upon. The Israeli authorities insist Thursday’s actions were not offensive and did not mean the ceasefire had been broken.

But if there are any violations of the ceasefire, both Lebanon and Israel will be required to report them to this group through processes that have not yet been established, which may leave it open to interpretation.

An enforcement mechanism is not needed, says Makdisi, a professor of international politics. “There’s a higher visibility now with the Americans being directly involved – but it’s not an enforcement mechanism.”