Benny Gantz, the opposition leader who quit Israel’s war cabinet in June, posted on X: “A good agreement will bring the residents of the north home - a ‘ceasefire’ will bring Hezbollah back.”
In Gantz’s view, Israel should be allowed complete freedom to act in Lebanon. He wants an arms embargo on the country, with an exception for the Lebanese army, and villages along the border to be demilitarised.
“You can’t talk in terms of a ‘temporary ceasefire’. The withdrawal of forces now, and the dynamic that will be created, will make it difficult for us and will make it easier for Hezbollah to regroup,” Gantz said.
Gantz’s position has been echoed across the Israeli political spectrum. Israeli newspaper Maariv spoke with several heads of local municipalities in the north who said they opposed striking an agreement with Hezbollah.
“The possibility for a ceasefire with Hezbollah has been received with a great amount of suspicion, hostility and objection by the Israeli public, including residents in the north, in the media, and politicians from the ruling coalition and the opposition as well,” Orly Noy, Israeli writer and chairwoman of B’Tselem, Israel’s largest human rights organisation, told Middle East Eye.
Noy said that for over a year, the Israel government has been promising a so-called “ultimate victory” in Gaza and then in Lebanon.
Israel never wanted to wage war with Hezbollah. Their goal was always to colonize Gaza with as little external interference. Hezbollah claimed they would not agree to a ceasefire without Gaza. So this is a big win for Israel.
I am also struggling to wrap my head around this. Stretching the IDF thin seems to have worked, not to prevent the genocide, but to strain Israel. From the news i saw it also seems that the stock of missile defense on Israeli side was running low as Hezbollah missiles not getting intercepted became more and more common over the past weeks. So militarily Israels seems to have reached exhaustion, possibly to a soon breaking point. Now they get time to regroup and if Netanyahu says he wants to prepare for fighting Iran, that is going to get ugly for Lebanon again. Of course a war between Israel and Iran would be a whole other level of escalation and i cannot see it working out without western allies committing troops to it.
While the ICC arrest warrants put further stress on Israel legally, there still seems to be no sufficient motion to push for them to end the illegal occupation of Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank. If Israel gets away with the destruction and carnage in Gaza and Lebanon, they will use even more bombs next time in Lebanon.