World
Israel, Hezbollah agree to ceasefire brokered by US and France, to take effect Wednesday
Netanyahu said he was ready to implement a ceasefire deal and would respond forcefully to any violation by Hezbollah.
A ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah will take effect on Wednesday after both sides accepted an agreement brokered by the United States and France, U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday.
The accord cleared the way for an end to a conflict across the Israeli-Lebanese border that has killed thousands of people since it was ignited by the Gaza war last year.
Biden, who made remarks at the White House shortly after Israel’s security cabinet approved the agreement in a 10-1 vote, said he had spoken to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati. Fighting would end at 4 a.m. local time (0200 GMT), he said.
“This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities,” Biden said. “What is left of Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations will not be allowed to threaten the security of Israel again.”
Israel will gradually withdraw its forces over 60 days as Lebanon’s army takes control of territory near its border with Israel to ensure that Hezbollah does not rebuild its infrastructure there, Biden said.
“Civilians on both sides will soon be able to safely return to their communities,” he said.
French President Emmanuel Macron cheered the signing of the deal on social-media platform X, saying it was “the culmination of efforts undertaken for many months with the Israeli and Lebanese authorities, in close collaboration with the United States.”
Lebanon’s Mikati issued a statement welcoming the deal. Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib earlier said the Lebanese army would be ready to have at least 5,000 troops deployed in southern Lebanon as Israeli troops withdraw.
Netanyahu said he was ready to implement a ceasefire deal and would respond forcefully to any violation by Hezbollah.
Netanyahu, who faces some opposition to the deal from within his coalition government, said the ceasefire would allow Israel to focus on the threat from Iran, replenish depleted arms supplies and give the army a rest, and to isolate Hamas, the militant group that triggered war in the region when it attacked Israel from Gaza last year.
“We will enforce the agreement and respond forcefully to any violation. Together, we will continue until victory,” Netanyahu said.
“In full coordination with the United States, we retain complete military freedom of action. Should Hezbollah violate the agreement or attempt to rearm, we will strike decisively.”
Netanyahu said Hezbollah, which is allied to Palestinian militant group Hamas, was considerably weaker than it had been at the start of the conflict.
“We have set it back decades, eliminated … its top leaders, destroyed most of its rockets and missiles, neutralized thousands of fighters, and obliterated years of terror infrastructure near our border,” he said.
The United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, welcomed the ceasefire deal in a statement, commending the parties to the agreement.
“Now is the time to deliver, through concrete actions, to consolidate today’s achievement.”
A senior U.S. official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. and France would join a mechanism with the UNIFIL peacekeeping force that would work with Lebanon’s army to deter potential violations of the ceasefire. U.S. combat forces would not be deployed, the official said.
The Lebanon ceasefire came after a change of attitudes on both sides in late October, the official said.
Biden, who leaves office in January, said his administration would continue to push for an elusive ceasefire and hostage-release deal in Gaza, where Israel is battling Hamas, as well as for a deal to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Despite the diplomatic breakthrough, hostilities raged as Israel dramatically ramped up its campaign of airstrikes in Beirut and other parts of Lebanon, with health authorities reporting at least 18 killed.
The Israeli military said it struck “components of Hezbollah’s financial management and systems” including a money-exchange office.
Israel issued more evacuation warnings late on Tuesday, just hours before the ceasefire was due to take effect.
Hezbollah also kept up rocket fire into Israel.
Israel’s air force intercepted three launches from Lebanese territory, the military said, in an extensive missile barrage on Tuesday night that led to warning alarms in approximately 115 settlements.
Alia Ibrahim, a mother of twin girls from the southern village of Qaaqaiyat al-Snawbar, who had fled nearly three months ago to Beirut, said she hoped Israeli officials, who have expressed contradictory views on a ceasefire, would be faithful to the deal.
“Our village – they destroyed half of it. In these few seconds before they announced the ceasefire, they destroyed half our village,” she said. “God willing, we can go back to our homes and our land.”
A poll conducted by Israel’s Channel 12 TV found that 37% of Israelis were in favor of the ceasefire, compared with 32% against.
Opponents to the deal in Israel include opposition leaders and heads of towns near Israel’s border with Lebanon, who want a depopulated buffer zone on Lebanon’s side of the frontier.
Both the Lebanese government and Hezbollah have insisted that a return of displaced civilians to southern Lebanon is a key tenet of the truce.
Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a right-wing member of Netanyahu’s government, said on X the agreement does not ensure the return of Israelis to their homes in the country’s north and that the Lebanese army did not have the ability to overcome Hezbollah.
“In order to leave Lebanon, we must have our own security belt,” Ben-Gvir said.
President Donald Trump’s administration has issued a pause on visa appointments for applicants around the world during an ongoing immigration crackdown by the U.S. government in the Republican leader’s second term in the White House.
A U.S. State Department spokesperson said on Tuesday that it launched a global training initiative at all U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide and that appointments for visa services will be adjusted to accommodate the training, Reuters reported.
Trump has pursued an aggressive deportation drive and immigration crackdown that includes revocations of visas and green cards and rejection of applications over a. range of reasons like political opinions and pro-Palestinian protests against U.S. ally Israel’s assault on Gaza.
He says the crackdown aims to improve domestic security.
The crackdown has faced some legal setbacks. A U.S. judge on Friday struck down a Trump administration policy suspending the issuance of immigrant visas to applicants from 75 countries, saying that the policy exceeded Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s statutory authority.
The State Department did not specify details on the training and its timeline, beyond saying the training aimed to help consular officers screen out applicants deemed likely to become dependent on U.S. public benefits and to ensure evaluation of visa applicants “comprehensively and consistently.”
The pause on visa appointments was reported earlier by the Financial Times, which said immigrant visa applicants with scheduled interviews at U.S. embassies and consulates have received emails that their appointments were being rescheduled and that they would receive future notice of a new date.
Trump’s immigration crackdown has been widely condemned by human rights groups as being discriminatory and in violation of free speech and due process rights. Rights groups also say the crackdown has created an unsafe environment in the U.S., especially for ethnic minorities who have raised concerns about racial profiling.
While Trump campaigned in 2024 on a platform of stopping illegal immigration, his administration has also made legal immigration more difficult – for example, by imposing new and expensive fees for applicants of certain work visas.
U.S. CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow on Tuesday for meetings with Russian officials, U.S. media outlets reported, citing unnamed sources.
The trip would be the first known visit to the Russian capital by a U.S. spy chief since Ratcliffe’s predecessor, William Burns, held talks with Vladimir Putin in November 2021. About three months after that meeting, the Russian president launched Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported.
CBS News and Axios reported the visit by Ratcliffe, U.S. President Donald Trump’s CIA chief, who served as director of national intelligence in Trump’s first term. The outlets did not say whom he was meeting or what the talks are expected to cover.
The CIA declined to comment. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov neither confirmed nor denied the report, telling Reuters President Vladimir Putin did not plan to have a meeting with Ratcliffe.
The U.S. last week asked Ukraine not to launch air strikes around Moscow, St. Petersburg, and some northern territories of Russia on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week because a plane carrying a senior U.S. official would be flying to the Russian capital, said a source familiar with the matter.
The source declined to provide further information. The Financial Times first reported the U.S. message to Ukraine.
On Monday, the U.S. warned countries to cut business ties with Iran or face secondary sanctions, a move aimed at stepping up economic pressure on Tehran to settle the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran launched in February.
The U.S. has no ambassador to Russia, which maintains a close strategic partnership with Iran involving extensive military, economic and diplomatic ties.
Tehran supplied Moscow with drones for its war against Ukraine. In March, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russia of supplying its version of those drones to Iran.
A Ukrainian intelligence assessment reported by Reuters in April said that Russia has aided Iran with satellite imagery for use in targeting U.S. facilities in the Middle East.
Moscow denies providing such assistance and has said it is ready to help resolve the U.S.-Iran conflict.
World
Israel’s Netanyahu says Iran tried to kill one of his sons
It was not immediately clear which of his sons he was referring to. Netanyahu’s elder son, Yair, lives in Miami.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Iran had tried to kill one of his sons, but gave no details about when the alleged plot took place, which son was targeted or how close it came to being carried out, Reuters reported.
Netanyahu’s allegation underscores the heightened tensions since the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran began in February, during which Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian leaders were killed.
Netanyahu, whose coalition is trailing in opinion polls two months before an October 27 general election, made the claim in a telephone interview with Israel’s Channel 14. He was responding to reports that one of Israel’s security agencies had refused to provide protection for a political rival ahead of the nationwide vote.
“As for my sons. Here, I think there is something quite unbelievable, yes. Iran targeted one of my sons. Iran tried to kill, to murder one of my sons,” Netanyahu told the conservative channel known for its favourable coverage of the government.
“Iran tried to murder one of my sons, and therefore this security protection is not a luxury,” he said, without providing any further details about the alleged plot or how close it came to being carried out.
It was not immediately clear which of his sons he was referring to. Netanyahu’s elder son, Yair, lives in Miami.
Iran’s mission at the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the accusation.
Netanyahu also said he had told the Shin Bet security agency chief David Zini that appropriate security should be provided for any prime ministerial candidate.
Israeli media had reported earlier that Zini declined to provide security for Gadi Eisenkot and told the country’s election authority there was no plot to harm him, read the report.
Eisenkot’s party is projected to win the largest number of seats in the election, although Israeli governments are usually formed through coalitions among multiple parties rather than by a single party winning a parliamentary majority outright.
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