Will Hezbollah honor a ceasefire?

As Israel and Hezbollah near ceasefire, experts warn the deal's effectiveness depends on Hezbollah's unofficial status and question if it will prevent future escalation without formal commitments.

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN NOVEMBER 25, 2024 20:38 Updated: NOVEMBER 25, 2024 20:45

A demonstrator waves the Lebanese flag in front of riot police during a protest in Beirut, Lebanon, August 8, 2020 (photo credit: GORAN TOMASEVIC/REUTERS)

Over the last week, reports that Israel and Hezbollah are nearing a ceasefire deal have increased.

What is important for understanding this deal will, first of all, be waiting to see if it is actually approved. If Israel approves the deal, then it will be up to Hezbollah to approve it as well.

However, in Lebanon, it’s not Hezbollah who will officially approve it.

More likely, it will be approved by “Lebanon,” meaning that Hezbollah may not even be mentioned or a signatory to the deal. This will essentially leave open the claims later that Hezbollah doesn’t have to abide by the deal since it’s not at the table.

This is the usual bait and switch we are all used to going back many decades.

IDF (Israel Defense Force) Artillery Corps seen firing into Lebanon, near the Israeli border with Lebanon, on August 6, 2021. (credit: BASEL AWIDAT/FLASH90)

What’s at stake in the deal?

First of all, Israel will want to show that it met its objectives in Lebanon.

In September, Israel added an objective to the war in Gaza, to include the return of 60,000 Israeli evacuees to northern Israel. The residents had been evacuated in October 2023.

Hezbollah threats on the border had harmed border communities, killed soldiers and civilians, and damaged around 1,000 homes by October 2024.

Israel’s then Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had wanted Israel to strike Hezbollah harder since October 2023, but was held back. In mid-September, the government added that securing the north was a war goal.

Is the north more secure today?

Hezbollah continues to launch rockets at northern and central Israel, killing and wounding civilians almost daily.

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Hezbollah has lost its terror infrastructure along the line of villages closest to Israel. This likely means it can’t fire anti-tank missiles at Israeli homes on the border.

Its heavy Burkan and other rockets may be affected. However, its arsenal of 107mm and other rockets likely still pose a threat from firing positions as close as six miles from the border.

It took Israel two months to defeat Hezbollah near the border, an area Israel conquered in around one day of fighting in 1982.

On the one hand, the sizable task of defeating Hezbollah on the border was because Hezbollah had grown more powerful.

However, it is also a window into the IDF’s tactics. The IDF prefers long, slow wars today, where it loses fewer soldiers a month than in the past, but the overall achievement is never clear.

The strategy is also unclear. In Lebanon, it’s possible Israel eliminated around 2,500 Hezbollah operatives.

Hezbollah’s chain of command and leadership was also eliminated. However, the group seems to continue to exist and does not show signs of being completely defeated.

Many questions will remain if the deal moves forward

Will Hezbollah return to the border? Will Israel’s residents return? Will the rocket fire stop?

There will be mechanisms in place that supposedly enable Israel to continue to act against Hezbollah.

One report compared this to the “war between the wars” in Syria, where Israel often carries out strikes on Iranian smuggling of weapons. Will airstrikes in Lebanon become a norm? If they become a norm, won’t Hezbollah act to enforce its “equation” of always responding to these strikes?

 Has Israel dictated terms to Hezbollah? It appears more likely that Israel is under pressure.

Nevertheless, the deal will be spun on both sides as a great victory. Hezbollah will claim that merely by existing after the war, it has won. Israel will claim it has set back Hezbollah's capabilities for many years.

However, we’ve heard this before. In May 2021, the IDF also claimed to have set back Hamas capabilities many years via ten days of bombing.

In retrospect, very little was achieved. This is because precision airstrikes don’t win wars, and they are not a magic wand.

Israel suffers from some of the challenges the US faced in Vietnam in this respect. It’s easy to count the number of things that were struck the way the US counted “bodies” of enemies eliminated, but this doesn’t always lead to winning the war. In short, you can win every tactical battle and not win.

After the 2006 war, Israel also felt it had not won.

However, in retrospect, that war brought many years of peace. Hezbollah grew exponentially more powerful, UNIFIL failed, and the Lebanese army failed to secure peace, but there was relative peace for many years. 

Israel may be able to say it achieved a decade or several years of peace and see this as an achievement. In fact, just taking the pressure off Israel’s other fronts could be an achievement, especially since Israel hasn’t achieved its war aims in Gaza and 101 hostages are held there.

 One goal of the ceasefire is to disentangle Hezbollah from the Gaza war.

Hezbollah began its attacks on October 8, 2023, to back Hamas and create a multi-front war. Iran pushed the Houthis and Iraqi militias also to attack. This means that Iran sought to surround Israel with proxies and pawns. By removing Hezbollah from the chessboard, the multi-front war may change.

Will Hezbollah tie itself to Gaza in the future and feel it can attack Israel again when it wants? This is the big concern.

One thing to learn from past ceasefires is that once Israel withdraws troops from Lebanon, there will be inertia against going back in. This is how UNIFIL was allowed to fail last time.

Will Israel be willing to step back up to the plate when Hezbollah flags appear in villages on the border and northern residents demand action?

There are other concerns

How fast can Hezbollah replenish its arsenal? Even if it lost 3,000 fighters and eighty percent of its rockets, can it rebuild this in a year or two?

Hezbollah may not be a party to the agreement, allowing it to do as it pleases. Will the “mechanism” that enables Israel to complain about Hezbollah’s activities really create a system that works to allow Israel to respond?

What will the role of France be? Will Lebanon’s army ever appear along the border, and will UNIFIL ever fulfill its mandate?

These are all concerns.

The US pressured Israel into a maritime deal in 2022 that emboldened Hezbollah. If Israel is pressured into this ceasefire and Hezbollah feels emboldened again, won’t it be only a matter of time until war returns? Will Hezbollah shift its threat to the Golan, claiming that sector is not included in the agreement?

There are many questions about the prospect of a ceasefire deal. If Iran feels it was defeated in Lebanon, that may lead to other deals and ceasefires. However, if Iran feels that it preserved most of Hezbollah and thus won in Lebanon, then the other fronts, such as Iraq, Syria, Yemen, the West Bank, and Gaza, may be emboldened. 

It’s important to see how Israel plays this. Hezbollah parades in the streets after a deal will be one thing to watch, in addition to Hezbollah releasing a full list of its fallen, which it has hidden since mid-September.