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Welcome to the Daily Beast podcast. I'm Joanna Coles, Chief Content Officer of the Daily Beast. And I am Samantha Bee, Chief Content Officer of my house and home and nothing else. Every Thursday, we're inviting you to the best dinner party you've ever been to. You're going to hear all our spicy takes on what's happening in politics and pop culture.
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Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com. This is going to be a very fragile ceasefire. I don't think this is going to last for very long. It was also the complete kind of sheer panic that everyone went into in those final hours before the ceasefire actually came into force. They said, he will start a war. I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars. I recognize the challenges from Ukraine to Gaza to Sudan and beyond. War. War.
Hunger. Terrorism. I just find bombs and I find dead people. But it's a really scary thing for me. I'm Venetia Rainey and this is Battle Lines. It's Wednesday, November 27th, 2024. This is a bonus episode of Battle Lines because last night, President Biden announced a ceasefire deal ending 14 months of a deadly war between Israel and Hezbollah.
I just spoke with the Prime Minister of Israel and Lebanon. I'm pleased to announce that their governments have accepted the United States' proposal to end the devastating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. And I want to thank President Macron of France for his partnership in reaching this moment. Under the deal reached today, effective at 4 a.m. tomorrow local time, the fighting across the Lebanese-Israeli border will end. Will end.
This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities. Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah erupted on October 8th after the Lebanese terror group started firing rockets in support of Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel. Israel has responded with daily attacks of its own on Lebanon. Over the last year or so, more than 3,700 people in Lebanon have been killed by Israeli bombs, according to the health ministry there. They do not distinguish between civilian and military casualties.
According to Haaretz, the Israeli daily newspaper, 44 Israeli soldiers have been killed fighting in southern Lebanon and 48 civilians in Israel have been killed by Hezbollah fire. The FT cites a higher number, saying more than 140 people in Israel have been killed by Hezbollah. Either way, most of those deaths have been from the last few months since Israel invaded Lebanon on October 1st and the war really ramped up.
But of course the impact goes beyond the death toll. Over one million Lebanese people have been displaced, as well as 60,000 Israelis displaced from their countries north. Under the terms of the deal, Israeli troops will withdraw from southern Lebanon over the next 60 days, and Hezbollah will pull back north of the Latani River.
Hezbollah's absence from the south, previously their stronghold in Lebanon, will apparently be enforced by the National Lebanese Army. So how will all this work? And what do Lebanese people make of this deal? I'm joined now by Maya Jebeli, Reuters bureau chief in Beirut. Welcome to Battlelines, Maya. First, I want to ask, how are you doing? There was a really, really heavy bombardment of Beirut last night. What was that like?
We had been bracing ourselves because many of my colleagues who had covered the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel remembered the really intensified bombing in the last couple of days before a ceasefire was finally agreed. And so they very much were expecting the same thing to happen. And we did see a really remarkable escalation, in particular, the Israeli military issuing evacuation warnings for parts of central Beirut.
which was the first time they had done that. They had actually struck central Beirut in the past without evacuation warnings, but the fact that they were now telling residents we're going to strike here, here, here, and here, four different locations, sent everyone into a panic. The roads were closed. People were fleeing. They didn't know where to go. So it wasn't just the intensification of the bombings themselves. It was also the complete kind of sheer panic that everyone went into in those final hours before the ceasefire actually came into force.
And then what's the reaction been like to the ceasefire? Are people happy? Do they feel like this is a good deal for Lebanon? It's a mixed bag, really. You know, we've seen scenes of people flooding to southern Lebanon, driving into the coastal city of Tyre and then further on south to try to get to their villages.
We're seeing vans and trucks and cars piled high with suitcases, with mattresses, you know, as if people are ready to move right back in. But the sad reality is that many of these families don't know if their homes are still standing. And the Lebanese army is still, you know, the deployment is still underway to be able to secure areas and make sure there's no unexploded ordnance.
And in other areas, the Israeli troops are actually still deployed within Lebanon and they have a full 60 days to withdraw. So in some parts of Lebanon, they haven't actually withdrawn yet. So there are several obstacles still in play to keep people from actually reaching their villages and being able to check on their homes or even actually stay there. What about politically?
Why do you think this deal has happened now? Is it a sign that Hezbollah has been so severely weakened that they've just had to agree to a deal? It's a great question and there's definitely various readings of it. So one reading of it that we've heard from some analysts and some diplomats and close observers of Lebanon is that
Injil Hezbollah had been weakened militarily and politically to the point that it really had no choice but to accept a ceasefire now. And another reading that we're also hearing from Lebanese officials and from some diplomats is that the Israeli military as well had been exhausted by, you know, more than 14 months of fighting in Gaza. And then the more intensified last
two months in Lebanon, where they were carrying out ground incursions into Lebanon. There was a statement by the new Secretary General of Hezbollah, Naim Qasem, a couple of weeks ago, where he said, this is a war over who says, ouch, first.
So really, it seems like that's what came to fruition. And it's really interesting to note the timing as well, because it's a 60-day ceasefire that came into force this morning, November 27th, and it will end just as Trump is taking office in the White House in Washington. So there are a lot of questions about what the end of those 60 days is going to bring. And if we're going to move into a long-term transition
situation of peace on the southern border, of stability on the southern border, or if we're going to see maybe a resumption of hostilities, which is really everyone's worst nightmare at this stage. And you mentioned that there are still Israeli military troops in the south as people are returning to their homes.
How is that mix on the ground going to work? The Lebanese army is supposed to be enforcing this buffer zone. How realistic is that given that it's such an underfunded force? Yeah, it's a great question. Let me unpack it a bit. I mean, first of all, the term buffer zone can be a little bit misleading because really what it's supposed to be is a zone that is free of any weapons that do not belong to the Lebanese state.
And so it's a buffer zone only insofar as it means that Hezbollah or other armed groups would be expected to leave that zone. It's not a buffer zone in the sense that it would be depopulated or that there would be no civilians living there. So just to clear up that point, because one of the priorities and indeed one of the articles that is in the text of the deal itself mentions the returns of civilians on both sides of the border to their homes. And that's been a central priority, obviously, for the Lebanese
government and for the Israeli government. In terms of the sequencing of, you know, when does the Israeli army withdraw? When does Hezbollah withdraw? And when does the Lebanese army move in to secure those areas so that people can return to their homes? That's been a central point of dispute in the lead up to the ceasefire being agreed. And it seems like as far as we can tell from our sources, that it's still being nailed down. The Lebanese army is
still figuring out exactly how its deployment would work. It has deployed to some areas, including to bar people from returning to villages that are not considered safe because Israeli troops are still there or because there's so much unexploded ordnance that it wouldn't be safe for a kind of mass return of civilians to go there. So these are things that, you know, obviously the massive shelling has stopped and that's something that everyone is very relieved by. But those measures that are meant to be carried out
in succession are still being pinned down. And finally, how have attitudes towards Hezbollah and its backer, Iran, shifted over the course of this war and now that we have this ceasefire? Is it possible to comment on that yet or still too early? I think overall it's still too early. If you remember the last time that we spoke, we talked about how divided Lebanon is along political lines, along sectarian lines, and some of those fault lines often overlap.
And so really everyone's interpreting this moment in a different way. And I think what we'll, what we'll see is that the various sides of Lebanon's kind of multipolar political spectrum will just kind of dig in their heels on their, on, you know, their preexisting positions. So Hezbollah, you know, has said that we will continue to be present, you know, in all of our roles, including resistance to Israel, including, you know, our health associations and development associations. And, and,
Hezbollah's rivals are hoping that this could mean that they have an opportunity to break what they would consider to be Hezbollah's stranglehold on the country. So the next phase for Lebanon, even internally, is going to be a really, really important phase to keep tabs on and to see how the various crises in Lebanon, the political crises, the economic crises that predated this war, how they might be
resolved or unfortunately deepened. Thank you so much for joining us, Maya. I really appreciate it. Maya Jibeli, Reuters Bureau Chief in Beirut. Coming up after the break, we dig into the Israeli side of the ceasefire deal and hear why it could lead to a ceasefire in Gaza. Welcome back. Now, last night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech outlining three reasons why Israel had struck a deal. First, focusing on the Iranian threat.
And I will not expand on that. Two, refreshing the military forces and our equipment. And I'm telling you, as it's not a secret, there's been delays in bringing more weapons and arms. And this delay will finish soon. We will have advance...
weaponry that will give us more power to finish our goals. And the third reason for ceasefire, detaching the front of the war from Hamas, from the second war that Hamas pressured Hezbollah to act with him. And now Hezbollah is no longer
And it will help us with the task of bringing our hostages back. To unpack all of that, I'm joined now by The Telegraph's correspondent in Israel, Yotam Konfino. Thanks for joining us, Yotam. First of all, what's your read on why this has happened now?
So it's a good question really, because Israel has been at least trying to reach a negotiation or reach a deal with Hezbollah for many, many months now. The United States has been heavily involved in diplomatic negotiations. They've been traveling back and forth to Beirut and to Tel Aviv for many months. But it's only really after Israel launched their ground invasion that the tables turned, so to say.
Because Israel's main goal from the beginning was to remove Hezbollah completely from southern Lebanon in order to restore security in the north. In other words, to bring back the 60,000 Israeli civilians who've been internally displaced. And that could only be done with a ground invasion. Everyone knew that. But it took a long time for the Israeli military to have the capabilities and the focus to shift from Gaza to Lebanon.
So over the past two months, on a daily basis, Israel has launched extensive attacks at Hezbollah all across Lebanon, both with ground troops in southern Lebanon, but also heavy airstrikes in Beirut and eastern Lebanon.
basically all over the country. And this has led to Hezbollah being so weakened that they've given up on their main promise from the beginning of the war, which was that they would never agree to a ceasefire with Israel until Hamas and Israel reached a ceasefire in Gaza. Now this changed in the past couple of weeks and Israel, I believe, sees this as a good opportunity to wrap up a war
that not only is exhausting for the military, but it's also exhausting for the civilian population in Israel, which is suffering from daily rocket attacks and missiles and drones. And of course, it's also costing the economy billions of dollars to continue this war machine. So this, for Israel, was a relatively golden opportunity to reach a settlement with Hezbollah
and to shift focus elsewhere, as Prime Minister Netanyahu said. And that focus is now going to be on Iran, as he said, the threat from Iran. To what extent has Israel achieved its military goals in Lebanon? I know Israel wanted the Latani River in the south of Lebanon to be this sort of buffer border. But does Israel really think Hezbollah will stay north of that border? And will the Lebanese army be enough to police that? I think, first of all, if we start with the military achievements that the Israeli army says that they've gotten,
It's not the same as in Gaza, where they have very specific numbers, first of all, with how many people they've killed, but also which areas they control. Lebanon is a bit more vague. The information coming from the army is hard to tell, really, to be honest, how much they've damaged Hezbollah.
What was interesting is that yesterday the former defense minister Yoav Galan for the first time, as far as I can remember, he put an estimate on how much damage they've caused to Hezbollah's military infrastructure. He said that 80% of their missile capabilities have been destroyed. Now if that's true, that is a significant achievement. And if they also can say that they pushed Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon, pushed him north of the Litani River,
then that overall shows that Israel did accomplish quite a lot. And from the outset, it was never the intention or never the goal for Israel to occupy all of Lebanon and to wipe out Hezbollah from every area of Lebanon. The goal all along was to make sure that southern Lebanon remained Hezbollah-free, as per the UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that ended the last war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
Now, whether this can actually hold, whether Israel can make sure that Hezbollah doesn't come back to southern Lebanon, that is the big question here, because it's actually up to the Lebanese army to make sure that they don't. It's up to the Lebanese army to dismantle what's left of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, to make sure that Hezbollah lay down their arms, and that no group other than the Lebanese army inside Lebanon has any sort of military capability.
So the Lebanese army will now monitor and act on any violation of that. And there's an oversight committee led by the United States
which will also report any violations. And in addition to that, there's an agreement between the United States and Israel that should Hezbollah violate the ceasefire and Israel sees any immediate threat coming from them, Israel will be able to attack Hezbollah. Now, this is a huge thing. It's a huge detail, really, because this is something that Lebanon...
from the beginning of the negotiations, said that they actually don't want to agree to. They don't want Israel to be able to violate their sovereignty whenever they see fit. So, in my opinion, this is going to be a very fragile ceasefire. I don't think this is going to last for very long. And I'm saying this because Hezbollah has no intention of surrendering completely and becoming a political group with no military power.
You mentioned Israel's desire to be able to go back into Lebanon and attack Hezbollah if they do regroup in the south. It's so-called freedom of operation. And as you say, that was a major sticking point for Lebanon. How did they get over that in the end? It's a good question. From my understanding, there is a specific clause in the ceasefire that says that both parties can act in self-defense. Now, that's a relatively vague sentence, and it's deliberately so. And this clause
basically gives Israel the right to interpret that self-defense however they want to, and it gives the Lebanese army their own interpretation of this. They've done it specifically to actually be able to reach the ceasefire, because, as I said, Lebanon would not have any clause in there that says Israel can bomb any part of Lebanon whenever they see fit, if they think Hezbollah is operating. So this is a kind of, it's a way of getting around it.
And that's why I don't think that this ceasefire is going to last very long, because of the vague wording and because Israel will inevitably act against Hezbollah whenever they inevitably will make movements or try to rearm or smuggle weapons. So again, this agreement, it's highly controversial inside Israel for good reason.
But it's also a ceasefire that a lot of people in Israel don't really believe in. The deal hasn't been universally well received in Israel, though, has it? I mean, we've heard a lot of statements from leaders from the north saying they're not happy. Can you expand a bit more on why that is? Yeah. So a lot of people, especially in the north, the mayors, the displaced civilians, they see this situation as a golden opportunity to finish the job, as they say.
It makes no sense to leave Hezbollah relatively intact when there's an ongoing war and a justification to continue attacking Hezbollah and destroying as much as possible of their military capabilities. For them it's a surrender to terrorism. They don't understand when Israel has the upper hand, when Israel is the strongest army and when you're already in Lebanon now with boots on the ground, why stop halfway? Why not go all the way and destroy Hezbollah?
And that's not only the residents of the North that have said it, it's also the National Security Minister, Itamar Benfier, who's a hardliner in Netanyahu's cabinet.
He said they're missing a historic opportunity here to get rid of Hezbollah and also people in the opposition. Opposition lawmakers from several parties have said it's a bad deal, it's a surrender to terrorism, and they basically claim that Netanyahu is just playing games and he's trying to hand Donald Trump a gift for whenever he takes over as president of the United States. That's
the people who are critical of this ceasefire. Then there are roughly 37% of the country, according to a late poll by Channel 12 in Israel, that suggests that they support the ceasefire, mainly because they want to go back to their homes
in the north, and they want to stop having daily rocket and missile and drone attacks all over Israel. So for them, they're fed up with the war and they see that Israel has reached the goals that they set out to in the beginning of the war and that there's nothing else to achieve inside Lebanon. It's obviously been nearly 14 months of this war since Hezbollah started firing rockets in support of Hamas last October.
What impact has this war had on Israelis? So it's really shown that Israel is extremely vulnerable to attacks from the north. That basically Hezbollah has been able to render the entire northern Israel empty, virtually empty of civilians, not entirely, but 60,000 people. That's a lot of people being internally displaced for well over a year. That's unprecedented in Israeli history.
So it's shown that the north is a weak point for Israel. Hezbollah was strong, obviously, because they could continue to attack Israel for almost 14 months in a row on a daily basis with over 13,000 rockets and missiles and drones.
But it's also shown that Israel is in a situation where it's not just confronting one threat from the Palestinians. It's confronting multiple threats from multiple arenas, seven in total. And Hezbollah was one of the strongest enemies so far.
But it's also shown that Israel, when it wants to, it can handle these terror organizations. It's causing huge damage inside Israel economically, on the military, lots of people have been killed.
But at the end of the day, it took about two months for Israel when they invaded Lebanon until Hezbollah was at a point where they were ready to basically give up or to surrender into this ceasefire. Had it not been for Hamas in Gaza, had it not been for the attacks from Iran and from all of the other attacks from all of these seven fronts, which range from Yemen to Iraq and Syria, had it only been Hezbollah that Israel had to deal with, they would have been done with this war a long time ago, I believe.
But because of the many multifaceted threats that Israel had to handle, they only reached this point now. But I think Israeli citizens have realized that they are in a situation where they're surrounded by enemies who, at the right moment, given moment, they would like to see if they could destroy the country. And it's not going to change in the foreseeable future. So does this mean a ceasefire in Gaza next?
Yes, it actually looks like there might be some developments in Gaza. Hamas actually said just this morning that they're ready to also enter now into a ceasefire. That's quite significant because it shows you two things. It shows you that Hamas was carefully looking at what was happening in Lebanon. They saw Hezbollah as their main ally, an organization that has consistently attacked Israel, put
put their own people at risk in solidarity with Hamas and with the Palestinian people.
And they're no longer there. Hezbollah has turned their backs on Hamas. That's a huge development and that is one of the main reasons why Hamas is now ready to lay down their weapons and enter a ceasefire. And the second thing is that Hamas is significantly weakened inside Gaza, much more than Hezbollah is in Lebanon. And they know that there is no endgame here. They don't control any area in Gaza. It's just a matter of time before all of them are going to get killed.
So if they want to have Israel leave Gaza now and still have some sort of activity, Hamas activity inside Gaza, now is the time to strike a deal. So I believe that we're entering a new period now where Hamas is going to be more flexible. And my estimate is that by the time Trump takes office, we'll probably see some sort of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Okay.
I'm really interested to hear you say that because my understanding is that there's no political will in Netanyahu's government for a ceasefire in Gaza. Is that wrong? It's not wrong, but there has been development in the past couple of months. And that is mainly that one of the opposition lawmakers and his party, Gideon Starr, joined Netanyahu's coalition to
And that has made Netanyahu less vulnerable to threats from the far-right parties in his coalition, who said they're ready to pull out from the government if he enters an agreement with Hamas. Netanyahu has around 68 mandates in his coalition now. After Gideon Saar entered the government, he's now the foreign minister.
So it gives them more leverage, it gives them more breathing room, and if you look at the polls, they've consistently shown for well over six months that the majority of Israelis would like a ceasefire in Gaza to get the hostages out.
And Netanyahu is no sucker. He knows that the polls don't lie and if he can achieve this, then that he would be scoring some points at least in the Israeli public. The only reason why he didn't do it was because he was very afraid of some of the far-right ministers leaving his government and dissolving it and calling for new elections. But now that there's a new stabilizer in the form of Gideon Saar inside the government,
I think he's got a chance now to call their bluff, these far-right ministers, and to actually go through with a ceasefire in Gaza. That's fascinating. So would a ceasefire in Gaza look similar to what we've seen in Lebanon, with the Israeli military completely withdrawing? Yeah. So a ceasefire in Gaza would inevitably mean that Israel has to leave Gaza.
There's no scenario in which the Palestinians, whether it be Hamas or anyone else really, will accept a de facto military occupation of Gaza as part of the ceasefire. And Israel also doesn't have any interest in it. There are certain voices in Israel that advocate for resettlement of Gaza, complete occupation, throwing out the Palestinians, but they're a minority.
Generally, Israelis are not interested in reoccupying Gaza, they're not interested in having the military there forever. So, eventually, in any sort of ceasefire, the Israeli soldiers will leave, but they'll of course be stationed along the border,
And they would like to also have a say in how the governing structure of Gaza, what it's going to look like after a ceasefire, because that's a huge part of the deal. It's not just stopping the attacks back and forth. It's also agreeing on what's going to happen after. And Hamas obviously is going to try everything they can to get some sort of say in any sort of governing of Gaza post-ceasefire.
That's going to be one of the main sticking points here. But I believe eventually they will come to an agreement. The big question for Israel is how many of the hostages are actually still alive in Gaza. Thanks very much. That's Yotam Confino, our correspondent in Israel. And that's it for this episode of Battle Lines. Thanks for listening. We'll be back as usual on Friday. Battle Lines is an original podcast from The Telegraph created by David Knowles. The producer is Yolaine Goffin.
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Welcome to the Daily Beast podcast. I'm Joanna Coles, Chief Content Officer of the Daily Beast. And I am Samantha Bee, Chief Content Officer of my house and home and nothing else. Every Thursday, we're inviting you to the best dinner party you've ever been to. You're going to hear all our spicy takes on what's happening in politics and pop culture.
straight from the Daily Beast newsroom. And we'll be having amazing guests too, those sort of guests you've always wanted to sit next to and talk to off the record. Thank you for listening and please like, subscribe and share this podcast with a friend you want to feel smarter than or argue with. Look, if you're sharing, feel free to share it with all your weird uncles too.
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