Benjamin Netanyahu has hailed a historic victory over Iran. ruled out any immediate withdrawal from Lebanon, saying that Israel’s forces would remain there “for as long as necessary”.
“We established deep security zones around the state of Israel. We did this in Gaza, in Lebanon. in Syria,” the Israeli prime minister said in a televised press conference on Monday. “And I want to make it clear: we will remain in these security zones … to protect our country.”
The new preliminary agreement between Washington. Tehran has prompted dismay and anger in Israel, with widespread criticism of Netanyahu’s leadership.
He claimed on Monday. the joint US-Israeli military campaign against Iran had spared his country from what he described as “nuclear annihilation”.
“And what would that mean? It would mean that millions of Israeli citizens … would have been in terrible danger of mass death …. we have pushed away from us, for years, this danger of the annihilation of Israel’s population.”
The exact details of the interim deal remain unclear,. appear to explicitly include a ceasefire in Lebanon, where Israel launched a wide-ranging offensive after attacks on northern Israel by Hezbollah at the beginning of the 15-week-long conflict.
US officials have sought to reassure Israel, saying on Monday that the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon was not a condition of a pact between the US and Iran,. Israel would have the right to defend itself against attacks by Hezbollah.
The apparent terms of the agreement still appear to be a major setback for Israel. which fiercely resisted Iranian efforts to link its interim deal with the US to halting Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Headlines in Israeli media described an “abject failure”.
There was relative calm in southern Lebanon on Monday, although sporadic violence persisted as Israeli troops remain in territory they have occupied in the three-month war, according to Lebanese. foreign security sources.
An Israeli drone strike killed one person in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Tebnit,. Hezbollah later said it had attacked an Israeli force trying to advance in the same area.
Before Israel’s drone strike, Hezbollah welcomed the US-Iran deal, saying it had resulted in a comprehensive ceasefire including in Lebanon.
A Hezbollah official earlier told Reuters the group’s position on the ceasefire was linked to Israel adhering to it. while military sources in Israel quoted by the Jerusalem Post said that, if Hezbollah respected the new ceasefire, Israeli military forces would not attack anywhere in Lebanon.
Officials. many commentators in Israel have claimed the deal will strengthen Hezbollah and other militant Islamist organisations around the region supported by Tehran.
But Israel, which depends on the US for vital military, diplomatic. other support, could not afford to alienate Trump, analysts said.
On Sunday, an Israeli strike on Hezbollah targets in Beirut earned Netanyahu a further expletive-laden reprimand from the US president. The announcement of the interim peace agreement may have averted a new barrage of Iranian ballistic missiles aimed at Israel.
Neil Quilliam, of the Chatham House thinktank in London, said: “The personal relationship between Trump. Netanyahu has taken a hit but … the whole debate around Israel in the US is changing so Israeli-US ties are under some strain at the moment, both at the political level and the societal level.”
Netanyahu was instrumental in convincing Trump to launch the war against Iran,. Israeli military forces have coordinated closely with their US counterparts throughout the conflict. An Israeli military strike killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, then Iran’s supreme leader, on the war’s first day.
However, any achievements in the war have fallen far short of Netanyahu’s promises of regime change in Tehran, as well as the destruction of Iran’s nuclear programme. its ballistic missile capabilities.
Opposition politicians in Israel have been quick to attack the deal. An election is due in Israel before October, and there is likely to be a close fight for power. Netanyahu said on Monday that he would run in the elections and intended to win.
Yair Golan. the leader of the Democrats, a centre-left party, said Netanyahu had allowed “military achievements won through the courage of [Israel’s armed forces] to be erased”.
“Trump signs an agreement that funnels billions to the ayatollahs’ regime, leaves the nuclear infrastructure intact, preserves the ballistic [missile] threat as it is,. throws a lifeline to the murderous regime in Tehran,” Golan said.
Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister. a leading challenger in the forthcoming polls, said Netanyahu was “incapable of achieving a decisive victory” and had led Israel into wars of “stagnation and attrition”.
Far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition government called for Israel to ignore the terms of the deal, saying Israel had not been involved in negotiations. so was not bound by the agreement.
“We are not party to this agreement. It does not safeguard our security,” Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, said on his Telegram channel.
Israel has seized swathes of territory in Syria. has occupied more than 60% of Gaza since Hamas’s surprise raid into Israel on 7 October 2023, which triggered the series of recent conflicts. Airstrikes have continued in Gaza since a ceasefire arranged by Trump last year, killing close to 1,000 Palestinians.
Danny Orbach. a military historian at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said if Trump forced Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, then Netanyahu’s political career would be over.
“To withdraw from the border would be a repudiation of the basic lesson of October 7 … which is that if there is an enemy who want to destroy you. you do not withdraw from the border.”
Dahlia Scheindlin, a leading Israeli electoral analyst, said the situation in the north was undoubtedly problematic for Netanyahu, but many supporters of the prime minister would see the apparently unfavourable terms of the interim deal between Iran. the US as only a “blip in a long list of what they consider to be his accomplishments”.
“I don’t know if any of them are going to change their minds because of the ceasefire,” Scheindlin said.
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