On November 26, 2024, in a rare moment of clarity, President Joe Biden celebrated a ceasefire U.S. diplomats and Special Envoy Amos Hochstein negotiated to end fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. Speaking from the Rose Garden, he announced, “Today, I have some good news to report from the Middle East. I just spoke with the prime minister of Israel and Lebanon, and I’m pleased to announce that their governments have accepted the United States’ proposal to end the devastating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.” He also thanked French President Emmanuel Macron, who helped push for the deal.
No one should celebrate. First, the agreement essentially commits Lebanon to fulfill the commitments it made 18 years ago to end the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. While the Lebanese say they will demand Hezbollah’s withdrawal north of the Litani River, the group certainly will test Beirut’s commitment. In 2006, it used the imposed ceasefire to rearm. With Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei demanding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “execution,” Hezbollah’s chief sponsor remains committed to Israel’s destruction and views Hezbollah as a vital tool to accomplish that goal. Nor does it appear that the deal pushed by Biden and Macron will rectify the problem of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, which, like the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza and the West Bank, remains in denial about its culpability and decades of failure.
While the ceasefire may quiet northern Israel and southern Lebanon, it does not stop Hezbollah from rebuilding its coffers.
There are other reasons to expect the worst.
First, while the ceasefire may quiet northern Israel and southern Lebanon, it does not stop Hezbollah from rebuilding its coffers. Here, it is essential to remember that the United States defines Hezbollah as a terror group with global reach precisely because the group has an international network that stretches from Toronto to Togo and Brazil to Borneo. Nowhere in Biden’s plan is there recognition that victory requires uprooting the entire Hezbollah financial infrastructure in Africa and South America.
Sen. Ted Cruz’s comments that Biden coerced Netanyahu’s acceptance by withholding vital munitions should also raise a red flag. Israel is a democracy; Hezbollah is a terror group, and Lebanon is a failed mafia state. U.S. support for Israel’s defense against its adversaries should be absolute. If the deal were wise, there would be no need to blackmail or extort the Middle East’s only true democracy. Netanyahu does not play skittles with Israel’s security as Biden has with the United States. In all likelihood, then, he will simply wait until Biden is out of office or even seek President-elect Donald Trump’s commitment to restore the flow of arms to finish the job.
Macron’s involvement is also a bad sign. France, the United States, and Israel do not share the same goals. Biden may want quiet and a feather in his cap to rescue his legacy in his last weeks in office. Israel fights to defeat a potent enemy whose arsenal is equivalent to a medium-sized European power but whose ideology is genocidal. France, however, has always had a sweet spot for Hezbollah and a tradition of allowing its commercial interests with terror sponsors in the Middle East to guide its policy. So, too, is the involvement of Hochstein, a special envoy whose pre-and-post-administration commercial ties represent a conflict of interest and whose power inside Biden’s administration comes despite an inability to achieve Senate confirmation in any formal position.
Biden has argued the ceasefire is really cover for a permanent arrangement. This continues Biden’s track record of being on the wrong side of critical foreign policy decisions.
Fourth, Biden has argued the ceasefire is really cover for a permanent arrangement. This continues Biden’s track record of being on the wrong side of critical foreign policy decisions. By preserving Hezbollah, he snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. Allowing Hezbollah to survive and remain a potent political force in Lebanon guarantees that there will be no peace between Jerusalem and Beirut, despite the desire of many Lebanese to confine their past governments’ irrational hostility to Israel to the dustbin of history. Lebanon’s failure to make peace with Israel, notwithstanding a 1982 deal scuttled by a Syrian-orchestrated assassination of Lebanese President-elect Bachir Gemayal, harmed Lebanon far more than it hurt Israel. Biden could have pushed for peace and reconciliation between Israel and Lebanon but instead preserved a group dedicated to its prevention.
Biden may celebrate, but to believe the ceasefire will hold is naïve. Any quiet will be illusionary as Biden essentially kicks the can down the road to an even bloodier conflict. At worst, Biden reminds enemies that they can try their best to attack Israel and other U.S. allies and that if they can extend the fighting from days to weeks or months, Washington will pressure their allies to concede. In the fight against terror, America has become a liability to its more clear-eyed allies.
