Israeli TV says Jerusalem informed of the initiative but not part of it; Hezbollah seems to drop demand for Gaza truce as its deputy leader backs effort for Lebanon ceasefire
The United States and Arab states have launched covert talks with Iran for a comprehensive ceasefire aimed at calming all war fronts at once, according to an Israeli television report Tuesday.
Channel 12 news reported that Israel is not currently involved in the initiative, but that senior Israeli officials have been informed about it.
The network noted that it was not clear how the efforts would affect the Gaza Strip, which is more complex than the rest of the fronts due to Israel’s desire to continue fighting even after a potential hostage deal, in order to ensure Hamas can never again constitute a threat, and the terror group’s demand for a full Israeli withdrawal in any deal.
The report added that Israel has not yet told the US what its stance on the initiative is.
“We are currently in a position of power, a ceasefire will be on our terms, including a [Hezbollah] withdrawal beyond the Litani [River] and the dismantling of all military Hezbollah sites in areas near the border,” a senior Israeli official was quoted as saying.
The report came as Hezbollah seemed to drop its demand for a truce in Gaza as a condition for reaching a ceasefire in Lebanon, rowing back from an oft-repeated promise to keep up its rocket and drone barrages until Israel halts its offensive against the Lebanese terror group’s Iran-backed ally Hamas.
Ever since Hezbollah began launching rockets across Lebanon’s border a day after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza and subsequent fighting across the region, Hezbollah officials have consistently said they would not stop until Israel ended the conflict in the Strip.
But Naim Qassem, the deputy leader of Hezbollah, broke that link in a televised speech on Tuesday, even as he promised to continue to stand with Hamas and Palestinians in their battle with Israel.
Qassem, now Hezbollah’s top official after its chief Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli strike, said he backed efforts by Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally, to secure a truce — without setting a precondition.
“We support the political activity being led by Berri under the title of a ceasefire,” Qassem said. “If the enemy (Israel) continues its war, then the battlefield will decide.”
Two days earlier, two lower-ranking Hezbollah officials had also talked about a Lebanon truce without making a linkage with Gaza.
Hezbollah has not explicitly said it was shifting its position. The group did not comment for this story.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters his terror group was still “confident in Hezbollah’s stance linking any agreement with a halt to the war in Gaza,” citing previous Hezbollah statements.
However, a Lebanese government official who declined to be named told Reuters that Hezbollah had amended its position because of a host of pressures, including the mass displacement of people from the main constituencies where supporters of the Muslim Shiite group live in south Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs.
The official said it was also driven by Israel’s intensifying ground campaign and objections to Hezbollah’s stance from some Lebanese political actors.
Top lawmakers from other sects in Lebanon’s patchwork politics have in recent days called for a resolution to end fighting that does not link the future of Lebanon — a nation that was already crippled by an economic crisis before the latest conflict — to the Gaza war.
“We will not tie our fate to the fate of Gaza,” veteran Lebanese Druze figure Walid Jumblatt said on Monday.
Lebanese Christian politician Suleiman Frangieh, a close ally of Hezbollah, told reporters on Monday that the “priority” was a halt to Israel’s offensive “and that we come out united from this attack and that Lebanon is victorious.”
Preceding these comments, there were indications from two other officials that Hezbollah could be changing its stance.
One of them, Hezbollah official Mahmoud Qmati, told Iraqi state television on Sunday that the group would be “ready to begin examining political solutions after a halt to the aggression on Lebanon,” again without mentioning Gaza.
Diplomats who also noted the shift said Hezbollah may have left it too late to generate any diplomatic momentum. Israel intensified its offensive by sending ground troops across more sections of the Lebanese-Israeli border on Tuesday and is continuing airstrikes on Beirut and elsewhere.
Israel’s “ruling logic” now was military rather than diplomatic, said one diplomat working on Lebanon.
A senior Western diplomat said there was no sign of any ceasefire on the horizon and that the position being expressed by Lebanese officials “evolved” from its previous stance focusing purely on a Gaza ceasefire when bombs started dropping on Beirut.
Mohanad Hage Ali, an expert at the Carnegie Middle East Center, said Israel had been able to seize the upper hand by ramping up the pressure on Hezbollah militarily.
“Hezbollah is playing politics… But that’s not enough for the Israelis. It doesn’t work that way,” he said.
The US State Department said Hezbollah’s call for a ceasefire showed it was “getting battered.”
“For a year, you had the world calling for this ceasefire, you had Hezbollah refusing to agree to one, and now that Hezbollah is on the back foot and is getting battered, suddenly they’ve changed their tune and want a ceasefire,” spokesperson Matthew Miller said during a press briefing.
“We continue to ultimately want a diplomatic solution to this conflict,” Miller added.
Israel has killed most of Hezbollah’s leaders and many commanders of its elite Radwan Force in air strikes in the past three weeks, and targeted many of its rocket and missile sites, after officially designating, as an aim of the war, the imperative to enable the safe return of some 60,000 residents of northern Israel displaced for a year by Hezbollah rocket fire. The IDF launched a limited ground offensive in southern Lebanon at the start of the month.
Hezbollah has intensified its rocket fire on northern Israel in recent days, including firing over 100 rockets at Haifa on Tuesday. / Read more: The Times of Israel (timesofisrael)
Photo: Iranians burn Israeli and US flags during an anti-Israel rally in Tehran, on October 8, 2024. (AFP)