At press time, two senior White House officials were set to travel to Israel to discuss a potential ceasefire agreement between Jerusalem and the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah.
U.S. President Joe Biden dispatched Special Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein, deputy assistant to the president and senior adviser for energy and investment.
According to Israeli reports, the two were due to arrive on Thursday, Oct. 31, where they were to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top officials.
Senior Israeli and American officials told Israeli journalist Barak Ravid that an agreement could be reached within weeks.
Netanyahu convened a meeting on Tuesday night with several ministers and senior military and intelligence officials to discuss a potential deal.
Hezbollah began launching attacks against Israel Oct. 8 of last year, a day after Hamas’s massacre of 1,200 people in southern Israel. Since then it has carried out near-daily rocket, missile and drone attacks that have devastated Israel’s north, displacing tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes.
Jerusalem has stepped up its campaign against the Lebanese terrorist group over the past two months, after adding the return of displaced northern residents to its official war goals. Israeli forces entered Southern Lebanon on Oct. 1.
Israeli and U.S. officials say that Hezbollah, which has suffered major blows during the conflict, is finally willing to sever ceasefire talks from the war in Gaza.
On Tuesday, Hezbollah elected its deputy secretary general Naim Qassem to succeed its leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Sept. 27. Saudi news channel Al Arabiya reported that Qassem was appointed to focus on reaching a ceasefire.
In his third public address since Nasrallah’s death, Qassem on Oct. 15 reiterated the Iranian terror proxy’s unwavering support for Hamas, staunchly rejecting calls to separate a ceasefire in Lebanon from the situation in Gaza.
“We insisted on the demand for a ceasefire in Gaza—and we did not agree to their request to separate Lebanon from Gaza,” Qassem declared, dismissing international pressure to de-escalate the conflict along the Israel-Lebanon border.
After the appointment of Qassem, who is reported to have fled to Tehran in the days after Nasrallah’s assassination, Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned that “the appointment is temporary. The countdown has begun.”
Hochstein has been engaged in shuttle diplomacy over the past year between Beirut and Jerusalem trying to secure an end to the fighting. Last week, Hochstein visited the Lebanese capital, where he reportedly received positive signals from officials about moving toward a ceasefire regardless of the situation in Gaza.
During his planned visit to Israel, Hochstein is also expected to meet with Gallant and Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, who is leading negotiations on the Israeli side for a political settlement to the conflict.
Hochstein is expected to present to them a formal proposal for a ceasefire agreement.
The visit by the Biden advisers comes less than a week before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5.
Channel 12 on Tuesday night published Israel’s list of demands for a ceasefire, including Hezbollah forces moving north of the Litani River, broad deployment of the Lebanese Army along the Israel-Lebanon border, international enforcement and a monitoring mechanism, guarantees that Israeli forces will have freedom to act against threats, the prevention of Hezbollah’s rearmament and a 60-day ceasefire to reach a final agreement.
“The defense establishment assesses that Israel is close to achieving its objectives on the northern front, as defined by the Cabinet’s war goals,” the Channel 12 article states.
“Officials believe it is now appropriate to leverage the IDF’s achievements in a political settlement that will allow northern residents to return home. However, some Cabinet ministers argue for deepening achievements in Southern Lebanon,” the report notes.
The agreement would operate under the framework of an “enhanced” version of United Nations Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War and called for Hezbollah to disarm and not venture south of the Litani but was never enforced.
Reuters, citing two sources, reported on Wednesday that American mediators are working on a 60-day truce to end the war in Lebanon by fully implementing U.N. Resolution 1701.
The new agreement would enable “a broad multinational force deployment in the area to prevent Hezbollah from reaching the border. Additionally, the aim is to create a mechanism allowing Israel to act should Hezbollah rearm in the region,” according to Channel 12.
The Israeli news channel also reported that Israel is offering to not expand its ground operation in Southern Lebanon in exchange for American support for a naval, land and air arms embargo on Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its arsenal.
Meanwhile, the Iranian-backed terror army continued to attack Israel on Wednesday, wounding two farmers, one seriously, when a rocket struck an agricultural field near the evacuated Israeli border town of Metula.
Hezbollah launched a ballistic missile in the morning which triggered sirens in the Sharon region, including as far south as Netanya and Hadera. According to the IDF, the missile broke up in the air.
The IDF also reported on Wednesday morning that three drones had crossed from Lebanon into the Western Galilee region, all of which were intercepted. Israel Fire and Rescue services were operating to extinguish a fire ignited in the area of Gesher HaZiv sparked by the attack.
No injuries were reported in either incident.
Furthermore, the IDF reported on Wednesday morning that the launcher used in a deadly rocket attack on Ma’alot-Tarshiha a day prior had been destroyed by the Israeli Air Force.
The IDF said that as of 3 p.m. local time on Wednesday, 50 projectiles had been fired into Israel by Hezbollah. The terrorist group fired some 75 rockets at northern Israel on Tuesday, according to an IDF tally.
Additionally, a drone strike early Wednesday in Nahariya caused minor damage to an aerospace component facility. The IDF was investigating why alarms weren’t triggered by the attack.
Over the past several days, the Israeli Air Force struck 100 Hezbollah targets throughout Lebanon, and killed dozens of terrorists, according to the IDF. On the ground in Southern Lebanon, troops located weapons, dismantled tunnel shafts, killed terrorists and destroyed Hezbollah launchers embedded in civilian areas and aimed at Israeli communities.
On Wednesday, strikes were reported in Baalbek after the IDF issued evacuation orders for residents of the city located east of the Litani River in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, saying that the Israeli military would act forcefully against Hezbollah there.
