The Journal. - What the Ceasefire in Lebanon Means for the Middle East

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

Israel and Lebanon have reached a ceasefire agreement that ends more than a year of fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group, Hezbollah. WSJ’s Jared Malsin takes us inside the deal and explores what it could mean for the region. Further Reading: -Israel Says Cease-Fire Takes Effect in Lebanon  -Israel Approves Cease-Fire With Lebanon Aimed at Ending Hezbollah Conflict  Further Listening: -The Risk of an All-Out War in the Middle East  -Exploding Pagers and the Risk of a Spreading War  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For weeks, life in Lebanon has been punctuated by the sounds of surveillance drones, sirens, and explosions. As the Israeli military attacked the militant group Hezbollah. Then today, it all stopped because Israel and Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire. There was palpable relief in Lebanon today. People have been waiting for this for a long time. Our colleague Jared Malson has been reporting in Beirut. So I was out in the southern section of Beirut, which is called Dahya in Arabic,

which is where most of the Israeli airstrikes in the city have taken place. And now you have people coming back to a neighborhood that has been shaken by the bombing, fires that were still burning, firefighters trying to put out those blazes. You had the supporters of Hezbollah driving through the street on motorcycles and cars, waving the yellow Hezbollah flags.

People coming back to homes only to find out that they'd been bombed on the very last night of the bombing. So it was a very surreal scene. How will this ceasefire change the wider war going on in the Middle East? It deescalates one of the fronts in this multipolar conflict that we've seen in the Middle East. And to be clear, this deal is regarding the conflict in Lebanon only. The war in Gaza continues. Yes, and that is significant. The war in Gaza continues. Israel's tensions with Iran continue. Israel's continued bombing of Syria,

where they're trying to cut off Hezbollah's supply lines and kind of roll back Iranian influence across the region. All of that is expected to continue. There's a lot of inbuilt fragility with this agreement because of all this other fighting and hostility in the region. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.

I'm Kate Leimbach. It's Wednesday, November 27th. Coming up on the show, a truce between Israel and Lebanon and what it means for the Middle East. This episode is brought to you by TELUS Business. This Black Friday, TELUS Business is helping small businesses get more done and save. Get the latest technology for your business at exclusive Black Friday prices.

Shop these limited time offers today at T telus.com slash business Black Friday. Conditions apply. TELUS, proud supporter of Canadian business. The recent conflict between Israel and Hezbollah started after the October 7th attack on Israel by Hamas. The Lebanese Hezbollah movement, which is both a militia and a political party, and is strongly allied with Iran, decided to intervene in the war on Hamas's side, launching rocket and drone attacks on northern Israel.

launching rocket and drone attacks on northern Israel. Israel and Hezbollah have been fighting along the border for months. And in September, Israel stepped up its response, invading Lebanon, bombing Beirut, and killing Hezbollah's leader. Since then, the international community, the US, France, and Arab nations, have been looking for a way to dees community, the U.S., France, and Arab nations have been looking for a way to de-escalate the conflict.

A big sticking point has been that Hezbollah said it wouldn't agree to a ceasefire until there was one in Gaza, too. For the longest time, Hezbollah said, no, this is an ironclad demand. And according to our reporting, they quietly backed down from that in the last few weeks. And that has happened since this series of devastating airstrikes by the Israelis and this eruption of full-scale war in Lebanon. And then on the Israeli side,

this deal is in part designed to allow the Israeli army to regroup and to rearm themselves and that's important because you know Israel relies on these part-time reservist soldiers and a lot of them they're not showing up in increasing numbers and they're still fighting on on other fronts in the West Bank and Gaza. And then yesterday, rumors started bubbling that a deal had been reached. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech in primetime, local time, where

he made the case for the deal saying that Israel wanted to focus on its confrontation with Iran, that it wanted to isolate Hamas, and that he wanted to allow the Israeli army to regroup and rearm itself. What does he mean by focus on Iran? Netanyahu said he's not going to elaborate on that. Look, so this is all happening in the context of this. The war in Gaza has spawned this larger regional war. That has resulted in Israel and Iran exchanging direct fire

for the first time in history. So there's been a lot of concern about the worst case scenarios of full-scale war between these two arch enemies in the Middle East. Lebanon's prime minister said the deal would bring calm and stability to the country and allow displaced people to return home. The ceasefire deal gives 60 days

for the Israeli military to withdraw from southern Lebanon and for Lebanese security forces to deploy in the area. And it calls for Hezbollah to move its forces away from the Israeli border and north of a Lebanese river called the Latani. What is the significance of the Latani River? The significance is that in the last deal, so in Resolution 1701, that ended the last war almost 20 years ago,

they called on Hezbollah to not have its military forces in the area south of the Latani. There's also a history here where Israel has kind of used the Latani as they don't want threats to their security in that area. In the 1970s they launched what's called Operation Latani to kind of roll back Palestinian militants from that area. And this has been their consistent demand, is they don't want militants in that area. And Hezbollah has agreed to move north of the river?

They have signaled their support for it. The Lebanese government says that they have agreed to it. And we've spoken with Hezbollah officials who have spoken positively of it. There is some ambiguity here where they have not come out publicly with an endorsement. There could be a number of reasons for that, one of which is that it does amount to a climb down from their previous

policy of maintaining the linkage with Gaza. Is that a major concession on the part of Hezbollah? It's a huge concession because it was their entire rationale for getting involved in the war in the first place. They were saying, we are doing this to help Palestinians. It is an act of solidarity with them and an act of solidarity with Hamas, who is an allied group and also part of this constellation of pro-Iranian militias in the region. And it's a big deal in the sense that they came under

a lot of pressure from Lebanese society to stop this. There was a lot of suffering here, a lot of people who had to leave their homes, whose homes were destroyed, a lot of people killed and injured, obviously devastating for the economy. So what is Hezbollah getting out of this deal? What they get is calm. They have suffered a huge setback in this war with basically a generation of their leaders being killed in these airstrikes, it has brought

this pressure from regular Lebanese people who, when you talk to a lot of them, will say, you know, why is this happening? You know, what does this have to do with Lebanon? Why are we getting involved in another country's problems? And there's a sense that they needed to regroup and there's both the military pressure and yeah, and pressure from Lebanese people. Coming up, what this deal means for people in Israel and Lebanon. This episode is brought to you by TELUS Business. This Black Friday, TELUS Business is helping small businesses get more done and save.

Get the latest technology for your business at exclusive Black Friday prices. Shop these limited time offers today at tellus.com slash business Black Friday. Conditions apply. TELUS, proud supporter of Canadian business. The deal says both sides have a right to defend themselves. What does that mean? That is a really important question.

So for the Israelis, one thing that they've insisted on throughout the negotiations is this so-called freedom of action where they want to be able to strike Hezbollah in response to perceived threats from them in order to maintain their security. A lot of the negotiations that unfolded over the last couple of months were around this point and they apparently got some kind of guarantees from the US that are separate from the actual bilateral deal itself. They would have that ability. The text of the agreement

itself, as you said, just says that both sides have a right to self-defense and it talks about, you know, these are two sovereign countries that both have that right. How will this deal be enforced? And what happens if either party breaks it? It will be enforced by, there's supposed to be an international monitoring committee that includes the U.S. and France, and they join these other parties that are already on the ground, like UN peacekeepers, which are a part of UNIFIL, which is the UN peacekeeping organization that already has thousands of peacekeepers here. What has the reaction been in Lebanon to this deal?

Well, it's a huge exhale here. You have to imagine this has been two months of constant airstrikes, of people having to leave their homes and, you know, staying with relatives, sleeping in their cars, camping in the street, staying in schools, this huge displacement crisis. And now those people are going back. I mean, there's lots of people piling in their cars and driving around with mattresses

strapped to the top because a lot of people who left the South, for example, they took out the mattresses out of their houses. They said, OK, we're leaving. We're going to go sleep somewhere else. And now you can see them driving back the other way. And when you spoke with people, what did they say? I talked to a guy today who, he lives in the southern suburbs, and the building had been fine for the entire war until last night when it was hit.

He showed up this morning and he kind of, you could see this look on his face of just like his heart sinking, realizing it's like, you have all this anxiety of like, is my house gonna be safe? Is my house gonna be safe? And then on the last night of the bombing, it gets hit. So a lot of mixed emotions, obviously.

What has the reaction in Israel been to this deal? It's been a mixed reaction. There's been some opposition in Israel, for example, from the mayors of some of these towns in northern Israel where their citizens have been evacuated. Some of those people wanted Israel to be more aggressive. And there's questions about, you know, can they really feel safe, given the fact that Hezbollah hasn't gone away and that their missile and drone and rocket capabilities are still there. So you have that reaction from the right.

On the other side of the equation, there's a section of Israeli society that has been also advocating for a ceasefire in Gaza where you would have the return of the hostages held by Hamas and also a ceasefire that would bring relief to the people of Gaza. How much could this deal, this truce, impact the war in Gaza? A ceasefire in Gaza is unlikely because all of the factors that prevented a ceasefire in the first place are still in place. Netanyahu in his speech last night intimated that they would continue fighting.

The intransigence on both sides of the conflict in terms of getting a deal in place is still there. And I'd say that hopes for a deal are diminishing. That said, the efforts to get one are ongoing. The Biden administration in kind of its twilight, they're still trying, as are the various Arab countries involved. But it's going to be difficult. What are you looking for next?

This is still a moment of profound insecurity and the end of the war in Lebanon, assuming the ceasefire holds, this is a huge relief for millions of people, both here and in Northern Israel. There's no question about that. The broader picture is still very worrying in the sense that you still have war unfolding on multiple fronts and you have all these actors repositioning themselves with respect to the Trump administration coming in.

That's the story that we're going to have to cover going forward is, you know, what happens with this much broader conflict between these two sides playing out across the region. That's all for today, Wednesday, November 27th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Dov Lieber. The show is made by Katherine Brewer, Jonathan Davis, Piagad Kari, Rachel Humphreys, Ryan Knutson, Matt Kwong, Jessica Mendoza, Annie Minoff, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez de la Rosa, Sarah Platt, Alessandra Rizzo, Alan Rodriguez-Espinosa,

Heather Rogers, Pierce Singie, Jeevika Verma, Lisa Wang, Katherine Whalen, Tatiana Zamis, and me, Kate Leimbach. With help from Trina Menino. Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapok, and Peter Leonard. Our theme music is by So Wiley. Additional music this week by Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord, Nathan Singapok, Griffin Tanner, and Blue Dot Sessions. Fact Checking by Najwa Jamal and Mary Mathis. Thanks for listening.

We're off for Thanksgiving, and we'll be back on Monday with a new episode. Thanks for listening. We're off for Thanksgiving, and we'll be back on Monday with a new episode.