Terms of Proposed Lebanon Cease-Fire Begin to Take Shape, Officials Say

After weeks of deadly Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon and punishing combat between Israeli forces and the Hezbollah militant group, the contours of a potential cease-fire agreement appear to be taking shape, according to several regional and U.S. officials briefed on the ongoing diplomacy.

The officials cautioned that critical details around implementation and enforcement needed to be worked out and that disagreements could still scupper any deal. But some cited reasons for cautious optimism. The officials, from Lebanon, Israel, neighboring countries and the United States, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive and evolving negotiations.

The proposed agreement calls for a 60-day truce, during which Israeli forces would withdraw from southern Lebanon and Hezbollah fighters would pull back to the north of the Litani River, which runs roughly parallel to the Lebanon-Israel border, some of the officials said.

During that time, the Lebanese Army and a U.N. peacekeeping force would ramp up their deployment in the border zone, and a new enforcement mechanism headed by the United States would ensure that Hezbollah and Israel remained outside the area.

Israeli airstrikes over the past two months have decimated Hezbollah’s leadership, severely degraded its military capabilities and displaced hundreds of thousands of the group’s Shiite Muslim followers. That has pushed the group’s remaining leaders, and their backers in Iran, toward interest in an agreement that could stop further damage, according to officials who speak with the group.

In a video address on Wednesday, Hezbollah’s new leader, Naim Qassem, said his group had made some comments on the proposed agreement, showing that “we have agreed to this path of indirect negotiation.”

Hezbollah’s two conditions, he said, were that an agreement would stop all Israeli attacks on Lebanon and preserve Lebanese sovereignty.

“We’ll see what the result is,” he said.

On the Israeli side, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under pressure to return tens of thousands of Israelis to their homes after evacuations from the north, fleeing Hezbollah rocket and missile fire and fearing cross-border infiltrations by Hezbollah fighters.

Israel’s military, which invaded Lebanon seven weeks ago, says it has destroyed much of Hezbollah’s military infrastructure in the border area, and officials are encouraged that the group appears to have dropped its previous insistence that a Lebanon cease-fire coincide with a similar truce in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, a Hezbollah ally.

Israel says it has destroyed many of Hezbollah’s long-range missiles, but the group has kept firing barrages of shorter-range rockets, sometimes as many as 100 per day. Ending Hezbollah’s ability to launch such rockets, which are easier to hide than large missiles, is a major challenge, so a truce could be the best way to end the threat they pose to northern Israel.

The war began last year when Hezbollah began striking Israel in solidarity with Hamas after that group’s deadly surprise attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. For many months, the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah remained largely confined to the border zone. But since September, Israel has drastically escalated the fight, extensively bombing Hezbollah strongholds across Lebanon, assassinating many of the group’s leaders and sending troops across the border.

Seeking to broker the agreement is Amos Hochstein, a senior envoy from the Biden administration, who visited Lebanon and Israel this week to negotiate with officials on both sides.

Since American officials cannot meet with Hezbollah, which the United States considers a terrorist organization, Mr. Hochstein’s main interlocutor in Lebanon is Nabih Berri, the speaker of Parliament and a close Hezbollah ally. The key officials representing Israel in the talks include Mr. Netanyahu and Ron Dermer, the prime minister’s trusted confidant and minister of strategic affairs.

Before leaving Beirut on Wednesday, Mr. Hochstein told reporters that unspecified “progress” had been achieved and that he had coordinated his negotiations with the incoming Trump administration. That appeared to be an effort to reassure the warring parties that an agreement negotiated by a lame duck administration would not be overturned after President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office in January.

The key issues that remain unresolved revolve around implementation, the officials said. The proposed agreement is based on a United Nations Security Council resolution passed after the last major war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, which stipulated that the only military forces allowed in southern Lebanon would be the Lebanese Army and a U.N. monitoring force called UNIFIL.

But in the 18 years since that war ended, those forces failed to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding and expanding its military infrastructure in the south, which includes tunnels, bunkers and weapons stores. Officials tracking the current talks acknowledged the shortcomings of this setup but said there were no realistic alternatives to deploy on the ground.

The proposed solution, the officials said, is a new oversight committee led by the United States to monitor truce violations. It remains unclear which other countries might participate in this mechanism and how it will function, although there appears to have been no discussion of a direct American military role. Israel has sought freedom to intervene against any Hezbollah activity it may detect in southern Lebanon, a demand the Lebanese side would likely resist.

If the truce holds though the 60-day period, negotiators hope that it would become permanent, an eventuality that, it if occurs, would likely happen under the Trump administration.

A senior Israeli military official said three weeks ago that Israeli forces were close to achieving the goal of taking out Hezbollah’s infrastructure in the 2.5-mile strip abutting the border, diminishing the threat of any Oct. 7-style infiltration of Israel from the north. Expanding the campaign would further strain Israel’s already stretched reserve forces.

American intelligence officials have also assessed that the Israeli operations against Hezbollah were far more successful than Washington had expected, taking out vital military and political leaders throughout the chain of command. They also believe that Israel has vastly diminished Hezbollah’s ability to launch long-range strikes on Tel Aviv and other major Israeli cities.

But Israeli officials acknowledge that only a cease-fire deal will stop the daily rocket attacks on northern Israel, maintain the military achievements without having to keep Israeli boots on the ground, and allow the evacuees from the north to return home.

U.S. officials say they are confident that Israel appears to be more eager to reach a cease-fire agreement in Lebanon than in Gaza, based on Israel’s engagement in the Lebanon talks and a realistic assessment of Israel’s military options.

But Hezbollah’s persistent rocket fire will prevent the return of Israelis to the north, the officials said, and they believe that Israel’s negotiators understand that the easiest way to stop them is a cease-fire agreement.

Adam Rasgon and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Jerusalem and Michael Crowley from Washington.