Netanyahu: With or without deal, we’ll push Hezbollah back to Litani

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doubled down on military might as the best way to push Hezbollah out of Southern Lebanon as US ceasefire efforts appeared to falter.

"With or without an agreement, the key to returning our residents in the north safely to their homes is to distance Hezbollah beyond the Litani [River],” he said during a visit to the northern border.

In a short video that showed him wearing a khaki flak jacket, Netanyahu vowed that the IDF would thwart Hezbollah's attempts to rearm and would “respond firmly against any action against us.”

What’s needed, Netanyahu said, is “Enforcement, enforcement, enforcement.”

He also stressed that “Hezbollah's oxygen pipeline from Iran through Syria” must also be cut off. “We are committed to all of this.”

In the background, smoke rose from Hezbollah targets hit by the IDF in Southern Lebanon. “From here,” Netanyahu said, “you see and hear how reality is being changed — there are planes above and heroic fighters on the ground below, eliminating the enter underground terrorist infrastructure that Hezbollah prepared for its invasion of the Galilee,” Netanyahu said.

Such an invasion would have been much larger than the Hamas invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023, he said.

“It won't happen anymore,” he said.

US attempts to finalize ceasefire deal 

The Biden administration had engaged in an intense two-week diplomatic blitz to finalize a ceasefire deal that would end the year-long war between the IDF and Hezbollah by resurrecting UN Security Council Resolution 1701. 

That Resolution, which set the ceasefire terms that ended the Second Lebanon War in 2006, has never properly been implemented. 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel last week. 

US special envoy Amos Hochstein was in both Lebanon and Israel in the last two weeks as he sought a mechanism by which to enforce the resolution, which mandates that Hezbollah must not operate between the Litani River and the Israeli border. 

Controlled by Hezbollah 

The Lebanese army is the only armed force authorized to be in that area. In practice, it has been controlled by Hezbollah. 

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, which was tasked with monitoring the situation, was never able to ensure the enforcement of Resolution 1701.

Hochstein, however, has yet to find a formula acceptable to both sides. 

Efforts for a ceasefire are now unlikely to bear fruit until after the US election on Tuesday, as Israel and the region wait to see who will replace US President Joe Biden on January 20.