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JERUSALEM — Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah have agreed to a cease-fire that will take effect Wednesday morning at 4 a.m. local time, U.S., Israeli and French officials said, bringing a tenuous halt to more than a year of hostilities that escalated sharply in recent weeks.

The deal calls for Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group, to retreat north of the Litani River in southern Lebanon in exchange for a gradual withdrawal of Israeli troops over an initial 60-day period. At the same time, the Lebanese military and U.N. peacekeepers will redeploy and secure the region — terms that have been accepted by both parties, President Joe Biden said in a speech announcing the cease-fire on Tuesday.

“This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities,” Biden said. “We’re determined this conflict will not be just another cycle of violence.”

Israel’s cabinet voted 10-1 on Tuesday evening to approve the deal, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. In a televised speech before the vote, Netanyahu said that a cease-fire with Hezbollah served Israel’s interests but added that the country would “maintain full freedom of military action,” with the option of striking again at the militant group if it poses a threat.

“We will respond forcefully to any violation,” Netanyahu said.

It was not clear if the agreement explicitly allows Israel to strike Hezbollah if it believes the group has violated the agreement. “If parties on all sides implement the agreement, as they have committed to do, there should not be a need on either side” for military action, said a senior Biden administration official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the White House.

Although, “both Lebanon and Israel retain the right of self-defense in accordance with international law,” the official said.

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Hezbollah leaders also signaled they would closely monitor the deal’s implementation. “We are accustomed to Netanyahu’s deception,” Mahmoud Qamati, deputy head of the group’s political council, told the Al-Manar news channel.

The terms of the agreement require that Lebanese forces ensure all heavy weaponry and Hezbollah infrastructure have been removed from the area between the Litani River and the Israeli border, the Biden administration official said. The United States and France will also join an existing verification mission, established after the last Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006, to make sure “on a real-time basis … that any violations are deterred,” according to the official.

For more than a year, as the two sides traded cross-border fire, a cease-fire deal remained stubbornly out of reach. Hezbollah said it would not negotiate until Israel ended its war with <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/israel-hamas-war/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Hamas</a> in Gaza. In September, Israel escalated its campaign, targeting the communication devices of thousands of Hezbollah members, killing the group’s longtime leader and eventually invading southern Lebanon on Oct. 1.

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A final consensus around a cease-fire emerged, however, after weeks of intense mediation led by the United States, which said it hopes it can use this deal to revive moribund negotiations for a similar agreement in Gaza. “Over the coming days, the United States will make another push with Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Israel and others to achieve a cease-fire in Gaza,” Biden said.

More than 44,000 people have been killed in the Palestinian enclave since the start of the war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of those killed are women and children.

Over the past year, talks have centered around a potential agreement that would end the fighting, return Israeli hostages abducted by militants and see a surge of humanitarian relief into Gaza, where more than 2 million people are living in dire conditions, aid agencies say.

Both Israel and Hezbollah ramped up attacks Tuesday. Throughout the day, the Israeli military pounded Lebanon with airstrikes. The bombardment sparked panic in multiple cities, including Sidon in southern Lebanon, where the Israel Defense Forces issued evacuation orders for the first time.

As bombs hit six different areas of the capital, Beirut, the streets grew congested with people fleeing. Dozens gathered outside the American University Hospital in the Hamra district after nightfall, some wrapped in blankets, others carrying their pets. Reem Hussien, 60, said she had already fled Beirut’s southern suburbs in previous weeks to seek safety in the Lebanese capital.

Earlier in the day, the IDF said it had struck numerous Hezbollah targets, including intelligence centers and weapons storage facilities. A multistory building in Beirut’s Nuwairi area was hit, killing at least seven people and injuring dozens more, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said in an initial toll.

Since October 2023, when Hezbollah began attacks on Israel in solidarity with Hamas, at least 3,768 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. More than a quarter have been women and children. The war has also eviscerated swaths of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/11/06/israel-attack-lebanon-strikes-war/" target=_blank>civilian infrastructure</a> in Lebanon, with more health workers killed proportionally in Lebanon than in Ukraine and Gaza, the World Health Organization said this week.

Hezbollah has used southern Lebanon as a staging ground to rain down tens of thousands of rockets and missiles on Israel. At least 78 people have been killed in the last year, about half of them civilians, according to the IDF.

Tens of thousands of Israeli citizens were also forced to evacuate their homes in northern Israel after the outbreak of war, and local officials across this region on Tuesday slammed the prospect of an Israeli withdrawal of troops, which they said would not create the conditions for residents to return home safely.

“This surrender agreement is a disgrace on an historic scale. … This is a failure to seize an historic opportunity to change reality for decades into the future,” said Michael Kabesa, mayor of the northern town of Hatzor Haglilit.

The deal also drew criticism from far-right Israeli leaders such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who called it a “grand mistake.” Eventually, he said in a statement, Israel will have to return to Lebanon.

In his speech, however, Netanyahu argued that Israel needs a cease-fire with Hezbollah to focus on fighting Hamas and facing the threat of Iran, and because there have been “big delays in weapons and munitions deliveries.”

The Biden administration earlier this year <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/07/biden-delays-weapons-israel-rafah/" target=_blank>paused</a> the shipment of thousands of bombs to Israel amid a rift over Israel’s expanding operations in Gaza.

Attacks from both Israel and Hezbollah continued even after officials in Washington and Jerusalem announced the cease-fire. The IDF announced more evacuation orders for Beirut’s southern suburbs while hitting more targets in the Lebanese capital. A Hezbollah rocket struck a bus station in the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, causing a fire.

<i>El Chamaa and Cheeseman reported from Beirut, Rubin from Tel Aviv and DeYoung from Washington. Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv, Ellen Francis in Brussels and John Hudson in Washington contributed to this report.</i>

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Rebecca Tan is the Southeast Asia Bureau Chief, covering 12 countries in a rapidly evolving part of the world. She was a Livingston Award finalist for her reporting on conflict in Myanmar and was previously part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize in public service for coverage of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

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Mohamad El Chamaa is a Beirut-based researcher and reporter for The Washington Post, covering Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and the Gulf. An urban planner by training, he previously worked on housing in post-disaster events and was a features reporter for L’Orient Today.

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