Israel Seeks To Extend Military Presence in Lebanon Beyond Window Granted in Cease-Fire Pact

As President Trump scrambles to prevent renewed fighting, Israelis are asking to extend their military presence in Lebanese territory. According to a November cease-fire agreement, they are supposed to leave it by Sunday.Prime Minister Netanyahu’s security cabinet met Thursday to discuss the Israel Defense Force’s call to leave some troops in southern Lebanon after the first stage of a 60-day cease-fire ends. According to the pact, 4 a.m. Sunday is when Israeli troops are to leave Lebanon as the Lebanese Armed Forces deploy and work to disarm Hezbollah in the southern part of the country. “Both sides have their reason to maintain the cease-fire, and the Trump administration certainly wouldn’t want a return to war, so I believe a bridging formula will be reached,” the founder of the northern Israel-based Alma research center, Sarit Zehavi, tells the Sun. “The big question, though, is what would ultimately prevent Hezbollah from recovering and reconstructing.” Some Shiite members of the LAF are cooperating with Hezbollah, rather than disarming the Iran-backed terror organization, the commander of the IDF’s northern command, Major General Ori Gordin, says, Kan Radio is reporting. He spoke with members of the Knesset committee on foreign and security affairs who visited the Lebanese border recently. IDF officials are also telling security cabinet members this week that many Hezbollah weapons caches are yet to be destroyed in southern Lebanon. While the Israeli army already has left the western part of the border, where it has been replaced by the LAF, several villages further east are yet to be rid of Hezbollah arms.The Shiite, Iran-backed organization released a statement Thursday, demanding that France and America force Israel to fulfill the terms of the cease-fire as agreed. It refrained, though, from attaching an explicit threat to renew the war.The 60-day target date for the IDF to withdraw from southern Lebanon is part of the agreement, “but it isn’t written in stone, there is some flexibility,” Israel’s outgoing ambassador to Washington, Mike Herzog, told Army Radio Thursday. “We are negotiating with the Trump administration to extend that deadline so we can complete dismantling Hezbollah’s infrastructure,” Mr. Herzog added. “All I can say is that the new administration understands our security needs. I believe we will reach an agreement” to extend the redeployment. Hezbollah seems to be using the moment to challenge the recently installed Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun, who was the LAF commander until his January 9 election. While Israel says the LAF’s deployment is proceeding too slowly, Mr. Aoun could face internal pressure if the IDF remains in Lebanon after Sunday.Mr. Aoun’s election was opposed by Hezbollah, as is the new Lebanese prime minister, Nawaf Salam. Yet, the Shiite group might have leverage over both, as its officials point to perceived Israeli violation of the cease-fire agreement, which the Lebanese public is bound to oppose. “I sure hope that the new prime minister wouldn’t allow Hezbollah representatives to join his government,” Ms. Zehavi says. “The U.S. administration must insist on this, as preventing Hezbollah from joining the government is the only hope for different results from the failed 2006 agreement.” Following the 2006 Lebanon war, Israel agreed to a cease-fire agreement that called on the LAF and a United Nations force to ensure no presence for armed militias in the border area with Israel south of the Litani River. Hezbollah, though, has grown to dominate Beirut politics, as it built a significant army to threaten Israeli communities near the border. The IDF is yet to complete the destruction of that army — including tunnels that Hezbollah had built as part of its plan to occupy the Galilee in an operation similar to the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion of southern Israel.Israel last fall succeeded in quashing most of Hezbollah’s military capabilities. After the November cease-fre agreement, some of the 60,000 northern Israel residents who had been evacuated at the start of the war started returning back to their homes.Even as they for now trust the army to defend them, they remain fearful that as residents of mostly Shiite southern Lebanon also return to their villages, Hezbollah will return as well. “I’m telling my kids that we are safe now, but that at any moment we might once again be forced to rush to the safe room,” a resident of the border city of Kiryat Shmona who has returned home recently told Kan News.

Israel Seeks To Extend Military Presence in Lebanon Beyond Window Granted in Cease-Fire Pact

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