Live Updates: Thousands Return to Southern Lebanon as Cease-Fire Takes Effect

Israel has battered the group in recent months, killing its longtime leaders and wiping out much of its weapon stockpiles.

Hezbollah has long wielded considerable power in Lebanon as a political party and military force. But the militant group, backed by Iran, is separate from the Lebanese government.

Lebanon’s caretaker cabinet is expected to meet on Wednesday morning to formally approve the deal with Israel, which was mediated by the United States and France.

Under the agreement, Israel would gradually withdraw its forces from Lebanon over the next 60 days, and Hezbollah would not entrench itself near the Israeli border.

The Lebanese military would send more troops to the country’s south.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed the deal on Tuesday night and argued that a truce would allow Israel to rebuild its weapons stockpiles while it works to isolate Hamas, the Hezbollah ally Israel is fighting in Gaza. He also said it would allow Israel to to focus on the threat posed by Israel’s regional adversary, Iran.

Construction teams are beginning to repair and open roads in the Dahiya, the area just south of Beirut where Hezbollah is headquartered and which has been pounded by Israeli airstrikes in recent weeks. The once densely populated cluster of neighborhoods has been almost entirely abandoned in recent weeks.

Many who left the area are now vowing to return. Mohammed Awada, 52, fled with his two children to the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli in October. He says his Dahiya apartment was flattened in an Israeli airstrike, and that he would look for a new home in the area.

On Tuesday, in anticipation of a new deal, UNIFIL said in a statement that it supported a truce and would fulfill its mission “impartially,” noting that “responsibility for implementing the mandate rests with the parties involved.”

The force, which has been in Lebanon for more than four decades, has a stake in keeping the peace, beyond doing its job. Peacekeepers are in personal danger and have come under fire from both sides over the last two months of fighting.

On Tuesday, Israel kept up intense airstrikes in southern Lebanon, including in the town of Naqoura, where the peacekeeping mission is based. The UNIFIL spokesman, Andrea Tenenti, who was sheltering in a bunker as bombs pummeled the area, affirmed that the peacekeepers had no intention of leaving.

Last week, UNIFIL said four Italian peacekeepers had been injured by rockets that were “likely launched by Hezbollah or affiliated groups,” and it blamed “non-state actors” for an earlier strike that had injured four Ghanaians. In October, Israeli soldiers fired on UNIFIL members at an observation post, the group said. And earlier this month, the force accused the Israeli military of taking a series of “deliberate and direct actions” against peacekeepers and their positions.

“Despite the unacceptable pressures being exerted on the mission through various channels, peacekeepers will continue to undertake our mandated monitoring and reporting tasks under Resolution 1701,” UNIFIL said, referring to the 2006 truce deal.

The U.N. Security Council created UNIFIL in 1978 to monitor Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and help the Lebanese government restore security and authority after a three-month invasion by Israel. The incursion was partly in response to an attack in Israel by Palestinian militants based in Lebanon who had landed by sea and commandeered a bus, killing 35 Israelis and an American. When Israel withdrew, it handed control of southern Lebanon to a Lebanese Christian militia, and oversight was given to the U.N. peacekeeping force.

Resolution 1701 expanded the peacekeepers’ mandate. UNIFIL was to monitor the cease-fire; support the Lebanese Army, which is not a party to Hezbollah’s conflict with Israel; and help provide humanitarian assistance to civilians and displaced populations.

That deal called on Israeli troops to withdraw from southern Lebanon to an area in the Golan Heights below what is known as the Blue Line. Hezbollah was to withdraw north of the Litani River in Lebanon. The area in between would become a buffer zone that the peacekeeping force would monitor for violations by either party.

The latest deal is based on a similar arrangement, and it will still require UNIFIL to oversee and report violations. But there are new developments meant to address the failings of Resolution 1701, which was never fully put into effect, largely because the Lebanese Army did not or could not force Hezbollah — also a political party with significant power in the Lebanese government — out of southern Lebanon.

Among the new twists, an international committee, including two countries that helped broker the latest deal, the United States and France, will report any violations of the commitments that the countries have made in the latest agreement. Israel and Lebanon will report violations to both UNIFIL and this committee.

The agreement will “create the conditions to restore lasting calm and allow residents in both countries to return safely to their homes,” President Biden and President Emmanuel Macron of France said in a joint statement announcing the cease-fire on Tuesday. They pledged that their countries would “work with Israel and Lebanon to ensure this arrangement is fully implemented, and enforced, and remain determined to prevent this conflict from becoming another cycle of violence.”

Euan Ward, Eve Sampson and Matthew Mpoke Bigg contributed reporting.

#عاجل انذار عاجل إلى سكان جنوب لبنان،

⭕️مع دخول اتفاق وقف إطلاق النار حيز التنفيذ وبناء على بنوده يبقى جيش الدفاع منتشرًا في مواقعه داخل جنوب لبنان.

⭕️يحظر عليكم التوجهه نحو القرى التي طالب جيش الدفاع بإخلائها أو باتجاه قوات جيش الدفاع في المنطقة.

⭕️من أجل سلامتكم وسلامة… pic.twitter.com/Y986iWkqfM

— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) November 27, 2024

For nearly a year after it began, the conflict appeared to be limited with casualties gradually rising as Hezbollah and Israel exchanged fire in a contest of wills adjacent to Israel’s war against a Hezbollah ally, Hamas, in Gaza.

Then, in September, Israel went on the offensive in Lebanon.

Exploding wireless devices

Israel’s offensive did not begin with tanks rolling over the border or fighter jets above Beirut, the Lebanese capital. Instead, it started in people’s pockets.

On a quiet Tuesday afternoon in mid-September, thousands of pager devices belonging to Hezbollah members began exploding across Lebanon, killing dozens of people and maiming thousands more. The country’s hospitals were swamped, with many of the patients women and children. The attack dealt a serious blow to Hezbollah’s rank-and-file fighters, incapacitating many.

The next day, walkie-talkies began exploding, causing more casualties and spreading panic. Many people began shutting off all manner of devices, including baby monitors, televisions and laptops.

Airstrikes on leaders

Days later, an Israeli airstrike targeted the Dahiya, the densely populated southern outskirts of Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway. The strike, a rare case of an attack just miles from downtown Beirut, killed at least 37 people, among them more than a dozen Hezbollah commanders. One was Ibrahim Aqeel, the commander in chief of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit that Israel has accused of plotting an operation similar to the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks.

Israel then unleashed a wave of airstrikes across Lebanon, attacking what it called Hezbollah weapons and ammunition stockpiles. The day of strikes, which experts called even more intense than Israel’s early bombing of Gaza, forced hundreds of thousands to flee the country’s south. By the day’s end, more than 500 people had been killed in Lebanon, making it the deadliest single day since the country’s civil war, which ended in 1990.

Then, in late September, an Israeli airstrike killed Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, a figure widely considered untouchable.

It was a tectonic shift for Lebanon: The most powerful man in Lebanese politics, who led the country’s most powerful military force for more than 30 years, was abruptly gone. The killing sent Hezbollah into disarray and thwarted a U.S.-French cease-fire proposal.

An Israeli invasion

With Hezbollah’s leadership decapitated and much of its arsenal destroyed, the Israeli military began a ground invasion of southern Lebanon on Oct. 1, targeting what it called Hezbollah military infrastructure in villages close to the border. It was the first such incursion by Israel into Lebanese territory in nearly two decades.

Days later, another Israeli strike killed Mr. Nasrallah’s expected replacement, Hashem Safieddine.

Since then, Israeli troops have fought a slow-moving offensive in a narrow stretch of southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah has fought with guerrilla tactics in response, killing dozens of Israeli soldiers and firing rockets at Israeli cities.

A rising civilian toll

The war has driven a humanitarian crisis in Lebanon, outpacing even the Israeli-Hezbollah war of 2006, the last major conflict between the two sides.

Nearly 3,800 have been killed in the current war, more than a quarter of them women and children, and over 15,000 others injured, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. The country’s embattled health sector has been pushed to the limit, with hospitals forced to shut down and more than 223 health workers killed, according to the World Health Organization.

The war has also left more than a million people displaced, created compounding crises and sometimes inflamed tensions in Lebanon’s fragile patchwork of disparate communities. For many in Lebanon, the risk of potential civil unrest is a pressing concern even after a cease-fire.

Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure has been devastated, too. Much of Beirut’s once bustling southern outskirts have been destroyed, entire towns have been razed, and even the country’s treasured antiquities have not been spared damage.

The World Bank estimated this month that the conflict had caused $8.5 billion in damage and losses to Lebanon, which was already reeling from an economic crisis.

“This is a pivotal moment, and this is the moment when true friends stand shoulder to shoulder and fight for the state of Israel,” Mr. Cuomo said at an event in Manhattan held by the National Committee for Furtherance of Jewish Education.

Last week, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip. The court also issued a warrant for the arrest of Hamas’s military chief, Muhammad Deif, accusing him of crimes against humanity.

The prominent defense lawyer Alan M. Dershowitz said recently that he was putting together a “legal dream team” to defend Mr. Netanyahu in the “court of public opinion.” The group includes former U.S. attorneys general Michael Mukasey and William P. Barr.

The group will argue that “Israel’s actions in Gaza don’t violate any international law or laws of war over which the I.C.C. has jurisdiction,” Mr. Dershowitz said.

Mr. Cuomo served as governor of New York from 2011 until 2021, when he resigned amid a wave of sexual harassment allegations. A House subcommittee recently referred him to the Justice Department for potential prosecution, accusing him of lying to Congress about his involvement in a state Covid report on nursing home deaths. He denies all the allegations.

Mr. Cuomo is considering challenging Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted in September on federal corruption charges. Several prominent candidates have entered the race ahead of the primary next June.

If it holds, the Lebanon cease-fire by itself could make an important difference. It was designed to restore stability along the border between Israel and Lebanon, permitting hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians on both sides to return to their homes while providing a buffer zone to ensure Israeli security and offering an opportunity for Lebanon’s government to reassert control over its territory from a weakened Hezbollah.

But as he stepped out of the Oval Office into the Rose Garden on a sunny November day in the winter of his presidency to hail the agreement on Tuesday, Mr. Biden clearly had grander ambitions still in mind. “It reminds us that peace is possible,” he said. “I say that again: Peace is possible. As long as that is the case, I’ll not for a single moment stop working to achieve it.”

With just 55 days left in office, Mr. Biden is racing against the clock of history. He would prefer to be remembered as the president who set the Middle East on a path toward a lasting settlement of longstanding animosities than one who turned over a mess to his successor.

With the Lebanon accord in hand, Mr. Biden said he would now renew his push for a cease-fire in Gaza, working along with Egypt, Qatar and Turkey, and he called on both Israel and Hamas to seize the moment. He described the cataclysmic violence that Palestinians have endured in Gaza in more visceral terms than he typically has over the past 14 months of war.

“They, too, deserve an end to the fighting and displacement,” Mr. Biden said. “The people of Gaza have been through hell. Their world has been absolutely shattered. Far too many civilians in Gaza have suffered far too much.”

Mr. Biden laid most of the blame for the continuing fighting in Gaza with Hamas, which “has refused for months and months to negotiate a good-faith cease-fire and a hostage deal,” he said. But he also called on Israel, which “has been bold on the battlefield,” to now “be bold in turning tactical gains against Iran and its proxies into a coherent strategy.”

An end to the fighting in Gaza accompanied by the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas — including seven Americans, four of whom are believed to still be alive — would be a gratifying final accomplishment for Mr. Biden and his team. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has made it his highest priority for the final weeks of his tenure. Mr. Biden’s advisers Jake Sullivan, Jon Finer, Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein, along with the C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, have all devoted much of the past year to the project.

At so many points along the way they thought they were on the cusp of a deal, only to have something blow it up — a new burst of violence, the targeted assassination of Hamas leaders, the killing of Israeli hostages. Yet they kept going back again and again, never giving up, perhaps naïve in the view of some, but certainly determined and relentless.

After so many close calls, it is hard to imagine that they could pull it off in the time they have left, especially if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel concludes that he would be better off waiting for President-elect Donald J. Trump to take office on Jan. 20. But Mr. Biden’s team insisted again on Tuesday that it was possible.

More elusive, yet endlessly attractive, for Mr. Biden is the broader realignment of the region represented by a long-sought agreement with Saudi Arabia that was derailed by Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, triggering the Gaza war. Even now, at this late hour, Mr. Biden said he might be able to nail down a deal to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia by providing American security commitments and civilian nuclear assistance to the kingdom and creating a credible pathway to a Palestinian state.

“I believe this agenda remains possible,” Mr. Biden said. “In my remaining time in office, I’ll work tirelessly to advance this vision for an integrated, secure and prosperous region, all of which strengthens America’s national security.” The chances seem remote, but if nothing else, he hopes he can set the table for the next administration to complete such a deal.

Administration officials said they were staying in touch with Mr. Trump’s team about their efforts. Mr. Hochstein briefed the president-elect’s national security advisers shortly after the Nov. 5 election and again in the past two days about the approach and came away feeling that the incoming team was supportive, according to a senior administration official who discussed the sensitive contacts on the condition of anonymity.

The official said that “the political and geopolitical stars both are aligned” for the Saudi deal, which would build on the normalization agreements that Mr. Trump helped seal between Israel and several smaller Arab nations during his first term. Mr. Trump has a close relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, who has made clear he is eager for a deal if one can be reached.

In the meantime, the Biden team has work to do to ensure the success of the agreement it has now negotiated in Lebanon, which could easily unravel given the fraught history of the benighted Arab state. Under the agreement, fighting was to halt at 4 a.m. local time on Wednesday, and over the next 60 days Hezbollah and Israeli forces are to make phased withdrawals from southern Lebanon while the Lebanese Army moves in to ensure the peace.

“This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities,” Mr. Biden said. “What is left of Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations will not be allowed — I emphasize, will not be allowed — to threaten the security of Israel again.”

Mr. Biden said that the United States and France would work to ensure that the agreement was successfully enacted, but he repeated that no American combat troops would be involved in the effort. “We’re determined this conflict will not be just another cycle of violence,” he said.

That cycle has been hard to break. Among other things, the latest deal’s negotiators said that Israel would retain the right to respond to any new attacks by Hezbollah, raising the question of whether the cease-fire would really hold. Hezbollah is technically not a party to the agreement, but the Lebanese government ostensibly negotiated on its behalf.

The Biden team was mindful of the unsatisfying end to the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, when the international community brokered a cease-fire, only to essentially move on to other issues even as Hezbollah never really gave up its hold on the south. Mr. Biden’s aides said they had learned the lessons of 2006 and sought to craft this agreement to avoid the same pitfalls.

A “tripartite mechanism” created shortly after the 2006 war will be reformulated and enhanced to include France and to be led by the United States. The group will receive complaints about potential violations and work with the Lebanese Army to build its capacity to ensure security in the southern part of the country. A recently revived military technical committee will include other countries that can provide equipment, training and financial support for Lebanon’s security forces.

Mr. Biden in his televised speech on Tuesday made a point of guaranteeing that no American combat forces would be involved in securing the border. But officials separately said that noncombat American troops working out of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut could be involved in providing training and other support.

Those, of course, were important details, but they were details, best left to aides to describe. For a lame-duck president increasingly fading into the backdrop, the bigger picture loomed. Yes, his time at the top is coming to an end. Yes, his successor is now setting the tone. But for now, the Oval Office is still his. The final legacy is yet to be written.

It was almost possible to hear Mr. Biden trying to write it in the Rose Garden on Tuesday. “Today’s announcement,” he said, “brings us closer to realizing the affirmative agenda that I’ve been pushing forward during my entire presidency, a vision for the future of the Middle East where it’s at peace and prosperous and integrated across borders.”

Closer, perhaps. But not there, at least not yet.