A necessary though imperfect deal caps Netanyahu’s finest hour
The ceasefire with Hezbollah won’t ensure the safety of northern Israel. But could anyone else have resisted U.S. heat for so long and achieved as much?
By Jonathan S. Tobin
JNS
Nov 26, 2024
There are a good many reasons to worry that the impending ceasefire with Hezbollah terrorists that Israel has chosen to accept is a bad bargain. A lot can go wrong, and there are no assurances that the quiet it promises will last. And yet, the deal that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to is probably the best Israel can get under the circumstances. Even critics of the decision must acknowledge that the Jewish state has not come away from the negotiations empty-handed but has achieved some real gains.
After a year of suffering incessant attacks on its northern communities that began on Oct. 8—just one day after the Hamas-led massacres in the south—Israel has finally forced Hezbollah and Iran to retreat from their determination to keep firing as long as Hamas is fighting in Gaza. This isolation of Hamas, which renders their continued efforts to sustain the war on Israel it began on Oct. 7, 2023, far more precarious, is a victory for the Jewish state.
So, too, is the fact that the last two months of Israeli attacks on Hezbollah have significantly degraded their capacity to inflict harm on the region. That’s a defeat for Iran, which had hoped that the seven-front war on Israel it had incited could go on indefinitely, weakening the country and its citizens’ resolve. Instead, they are the ones who have been diminished by military setbacks and vast losses inflicted on a group whose main purpose is to serve as a deterrent to attacks on Iran.
Equally important, this is a moment to consider that the setbacks dealt Hezbollah and Iran, coupled with the destruction of Hamas’s military capabilities, were only made possible by the determination and the ability of one man to stand up to U.S. pressure to abandon the fight for Israel’s security many months ago. It’s difficult to imagine anyone other than Netanyahu could have stood his ground against Washington’s pleadings and threats, and have gone on to achieve an outcome that leaves Israel’s enemies far weaker than they were when the current conflict began almost 14 months ago.
Netanyahu’s remarkable stand
For all of his faults and his stubborn refusal to cede power after so many years in office, as well as the fact that he bears some of the responsibility for the Oct. 7 catastrophe that happened on his watch, what Netanyahu has done in the year since then is truly remarkable.
Only someone with his steely determination and savvy understanding of the tricky dynamics of the U.S.-Israel relationship could have navigated the long months of war so skillfully. No possible successor in his own Likud Party or among his opponents in the Knesset could have stuck to his goals—and do so much harm to Hamas and Hezbollah in the face of the desire of his country’s sole superpower ally to force Jerusalem to accept the continued rule of Hamas in Gaza and avoid direct conflict with Iran’s Lebanese auxiliaries.
Whatever comes next—whether it is a renewed war with Hezbollah caused by their refusal to keep the ceasefire or to abide by its terms that demand they withdraw their terrorist cadres and weapons north of the Litani River, or the bloody continuation of the mopping up of what’s left of Hamas’s terrorists in Gaza—Netanyahu’s leadership has been indispensable.
He may ultimately be judged by Israel’s voters as being too tainted by his association with the worst day in their country’s history to serve another term. But his service as prime minister during the last terrible year of intense battle will still deserve to be remembered with honor. It was a period during which it was only his insistence on sticking to a goal of eliminating Hamas and dealing deadly blows to Hezbollah and Iran—while cabinet colleagues, political foes and military advisers were willing to give in to the Americans and accept far more disastrous deals—that prevented a diplomatic and military defeat for Israel.
Reasons to worry
Those who are outraged at the deal with Hezbollah have reason to be concerned.
The Iranian proxy group has never kept its word about anything, let alone agreements to stop attacking Israel or to withdraw from the southern part of Lebanon over which it has largely ruled for a generation. For those who hoped the Israeli offensive that began in September would only end in the complete defeat of Hezbollah, the announcement of the agreement is a disappointment. That is especially true when one thinks of the sacrifices that the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces have made to achieve what may only be a temporary respite to the fighting.
Nor can Israel rely on the United States or France to take action to guarantee that Hezbollah will not simply move its terrorist forces and missiles back to Israel’s border as soon as the IDF withdraws. No matter the provocation, only Israeli action (which will likely again be demonized and subjected to lawfare attacks by the international community) can defend the security of the Jewish state.
What’s more, the tens of thousands of Israelis who were forced to flee their homes after the Iranian proxy group began firing on northern Israel last October have no reliable guarantee that they will be safe if they go back.
On top of all that, it must also be acknowledged that pressure from the Biden administration, which has always been more interested in appeasing Iran and forcing Israel to accept ceasefires with both Hezbollah and Hamas, was part of the equation that led to this decision.
Will that encourage whoever is in charge of U.S. foreign policy in the next two months—whether it is a visibly diminished Biden or someone else—to push for a binding U.N. Security Council resolution that would impose a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip that will help what’s left of Hamas to survive and ultimately take back power there?
Yet despite all of that, those inclined to view the cessation of war in the north as a defeat for Israel need to consider how much it has gained in the last several months.
The myth of Hezbollah exploded
Iran and its Lebanese henchmen had counted on Israel being too intimidated by the prospect of another round of fighting with a Hezbollah force that had more than 120,000 rockets and missiles pointed at it. The evisceration of the leadership of the terrorist group and sustained damage done to its forces and arms caches confounded those who thought the Jewish state was too weak to achieve such a result. While Hezbollah and Iran will over time reorganize, rearm and recoup their losses, they also now know that their hubristic confidence that they were invincible has been exposed as a myth.
The fact that Hezbollah was forced by its losses to accept a ceasefire without it being tied to an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza is also an enormous setback for Iran’s multifront war strategy.
Though the next two months will remain a period of extreme danger for Israel, Netanyahu’s decision should also solidify his relationship with the incoming Trump administration. The president-elect has been open about his hope that Israel will conclude its wars in Gaza and Lebanon before he is sworn in on Jan. 20.
A deal that would disarm Hamas, guarantee it could not come back to power in Gaza and gain the release of the remaining 101 Israeli hostages still being held by the terrorists may be unlikely, given the fanaticism of the Islamists even after their abandonment by their Lebanese allies. Yet by concluding a deal with Hezbollah, Netanyahu can say he’s done as much as he can to give Trump a clean slate and be able to further strengthen the U.S. obligation to back the Jewish state to the hilt if the terrorists violate the accord.
The ceasefire in the north will also enable the IDF to concentrate on the tough task of mopping up Hamas guerrillas in Gaza after Netanyahu’s staunch refusal to accept Biden’s ultimatums to stand down made the destruction of their formal military forces possible.
Restoring deterrence
Oct. 7 was an enormous blow to Israel’s ability to deter its enemies and undermined confidence in its reputation as the “strong horse” in the region that could inspire Arab states to resist Iran. But the victories that the IDF achieved, albeit at the terrible price of approximately 900 soldiers and police officers slain fighting their nation’s genocidal foes, have restored its strategic position. With Hezbollah weakened and Hamas on the run, as well as with much of its own air defenses being taken out by Israeli military action, Tehran is far weaker than it was on Oct. 6, 2023.
None of that will convince those who hate Netanyahu—and falsely accuse him of undermining democracy and being a corrupt authoritarian—to admire him. Nor will they stop their incessant resistance to his government, whereby he is not only blamed for Oct. 7 (a guilt he shares with the entire leadership of the IDF and Israel’s intelligence establishment) but for Hamas’s refusal to release the hostages.
The lion’s share of the credit for the victories the IDF has achieved belongs to the soldiers who paid for them in blood. But honest observers must also acknowledge that it’s not likely that any other conceivable Israeli leader would have had the guts and the stiff spine to fend off a year of American pressure that made them possible. Certainly not Netanyahu’s political opponents Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid. During his brief time as temporary prime minister in 2022, Lapid folded in the face of far less American pressure to give up Israeli natural-gas fields to Hezbollah in a failed attempt at appeasement. Nor can one imagine anyone else in the Likud-led coalition government having the knowledge or the resolve that Netanyahu showed time and again.
The prime minister has been around too long, behaved too arrogantly and made too many enemies to ever be given universal praise, no matter what he’s done. But while opinion about him will always be mixed at best, his post-Oct. 7 stand has been his finest hour. One can only hope future historians will give him his due for what he’s accomplished in the last year.
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