The ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon, which came into effect on Wednesday morning, is facing significant questions regarding its stability and longevity.

Throughout the day on Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces detected violations of the truce by Hezbollah, and in keeping with vows by government and military leaders, enforced the arrangement using Israeli firepower.

Several suspects were identified arriving with vehicles to a number of areas in Southern Lebanon, breaching the conditions of the ceasefire and leading the Israeli military to fire on them. 

Later that day, terrorist activity was identified in a facility used by Hezbollah to store mid-range rockets in Southern Lebanon. An Israeli Air Force craft struck the site, the military reported.

“The IDF remains in Southern Lebanon and will actively enforce violations of the ceasefire agreement,” it added.

Professor Eyal Zisser, vice rector of Tel Aviv University and holder of the Yona and Dina Ettinger Chair in Contemporary History of the Middle East, told JNS on Thursday that the arrangement is shaky, “as is everything in Lebanon.”

“It depends on one thing—whether Hezbollah will be deterred from violating it for fear of an Israeli response,” Zisser said. “If Hezbollah decides to violate it, the Lebanese army will not be able and will not want to prevent it from doing so, because it is weak and also composed of members of the Shi’ite sect, and in general, it is an army lacking capability, and UNIFIL is a body lacking usefulness and ability that will not confront Hezbollah.”

The burden will therefore be on Israel and its willingness to enforce the arrangement, including for so-called minor incidents, he added, a dynamic that could lead back to war.

“It is clear that Hezbollah will seek to rearm and violate the agreement as soon as it can,” Zisser assessed. “As a result, the agreement is on ice, and most of the chances are that they will not keep to it.”

This, he added, likely sets the stop clock rolling to the next conflict.

The military appears to be keenly aware of these challenges. IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said on Wednesday: “Early this morning, the ceasefire agreement with Lebanon came into effect, as approved by Israel’s prime minister, the minister of defense and the Cabinet. The IDF’s mission is to enforce the agreement—the IDF is operating determinedly—any violation of the ceasefire will be met with fire.”

Hagari emphasized that IDF soldiers remain positioned in Southern Lebanon, with forces only gradually withdrawing in future in accordance with the agreement.

“IAF aircraft continue to fly in Lebanese airspace, gathering intelligence and are prepared to act wherever necessary. In the coming weeks, we will reshape the defensive and security areas and implement lessons learned from the past,” he said.

Operational redundancy

Meanwhile, concerns remain about Hezbollah’s capacity to rebuild. Sarit Zehavi, founder and president of the Alma Research and Education Center, which specializes in security challenges in the northern arena, and Tal Beeri, head of research at Alma, stated in a joint paper on Wednesday that “Hezbollah maintains a widely dispersed UAV array. The UAVs are operated both by the Radwan unit, the [Hezbollah] geographic units and Hezbollah’s air unit—Unit 127. In our assessment, before the war, Hezbollah had about 2,500 UAVs of all types.”

The IDF estimated on Wednesday that 70% of Hezbollah’s drone arsenal was destroyed over the past year of conflict.

Zehavi and Beeri wrote that “although the IDF has worked hard to damage this array and its commanders …, it seems that considering its decentralization and deployment throughout Lebanon, and the ability to assemble UAVs independently on Lebanese soil, Hezbollah has managed to maintain operational redundancy.”

They noted that the IDF inflected massive damage on Hezbollah’s senior military leadership, and over 170 field unit commanders, part of Hezbollah’s Jihad Council, were eliminated. They cited estimates that the IDF killed some 3,000 terror operatives and wounded thousands more, and severely damaged Hezbollah infrastructure, to the point where the terror organization can no longer pose an invasion threat to the Galilee.

Hezbollah’s missile and rocket arrays also sustained severe damage, with 70% to 80% of its firepower destroyed, but this still leaves thousands of projectiles in its possession, Zehavi and Beeri noted.

Addressing the text of the truce agreement, they wrote, “The bottom line is that the agreement’s content fails to provide a clear answer to the phrase ‘effective enforcement mechanism,’ resulting in further ambiguity.

“The agreement does not say what will happen if Lebanon does not disarm Hezbollah south of the Litani [River] during these [initial] 60 days, and what will happen if Israel proves Hezbollah’s presence south of the Litani, including in areas that the IDF did not reach during this period. At the same time, during the 60 days, Lebanese residents will be able to return to live in the hills overlooking the Israeli communities along the contact line,” they cautioned.

Another critical issue is that “the state of Lebanon has not changed its relations with the state of Hezbollah. Hezbollah continues to be a member of the Lebanese government and to maintain its civilian systems, which enable it to create dependence of the Shi’ites in Lebanon on the organization—and thus continue to establish the tactic of human shields,” according to Zehavi and Beeri.

“At the end of the day, the conclusion from all these is that the Middle East is measured by actions. The texts are drafted in a political way that allows each side to interpret them in a way that is convenient for them (including the international mediator/supervisor).

“In the end, the decision is in the hands of the Israeli government—at what point will the IDF forces receive an order from the Israeli government to act against Hezbollah’s violations, which are clear to everyone that they will come,” they added.

“To clarify the issue, we will conclude with a statement written on November 20, 2024, by Ibrahim al-Amin, editor of the Al-Akhbar newspaper—Hezbollah’s main mouthpiece: ‘The current conflict is only one round of war against Israel, which must be destroyed. To this end, Hezbollah will work to rehabilitate its capabilities and regain its strength.”

Not just in Southern Lebanon

On Wednesday, an Israeli security official said that “this is just the beginning” of the arrangement phase, and that Israel has called on Lebanese citizens to stay away from the IDF until Israel signals to them that it’s safe for them to return to a zone of Southern Lebanon currently under Israeli control.

“And of course, if we will see Hezbollah coming back or trying to build any capabilities—not just in the area of Southern Lebanon—we [will] prevent it,” he said.

Despite the enforcement mechanisms outlined in the ceasefire agreement, which call on the Lebanese Armed Forces under American supervision to enforce ceasefire violations, it appears as if the IDF is not waiting for anyone else to begin enforcement action.

“This is our directions from the government,” said the security source. “These first days are very important. Right now, we’re seeing some fire between our forces, and attempts by Hezbollah to provoke us. And we will enforce it [the ceasefire terms] by fire,” he vowed.

Source: JNS