Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on his security cabinet to approve a ceasefire deal with Lebanon’s Hezbollah group to halt the fighting which has been ongoing for more than a year.
“Tonight I will bring before the cabinet a plan for a ceasefire in Lebanon,” he said in an address to the nation on Tuesday.
The duration of the ceasefire “depends on what happens in Lebanon,” he said, warning the Iran-backed militia that any violations of the terms of the deal would be met with a harsh response.
“If Hezbollah tries to attack us, if it arms itself, if it rebuilds infrastructure next to the border, we will attack them,” he said.
Netanyahu said in recent months that Israel had killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and other members of the leadership, destroyed most of the group’s missile arsenal and demolished an underground tunnel network in southern Lebanon.
“It is not the same Hezbollah,” the prime minister said.
Referring to powerful airstrikes that rocked Lebanon’s capital earlier in the day, Netanyahu said: “The earth is shaking in Beirut.”
The Israeli Air Force carried out multiple strikes on Beirut’s centre and the city’s southern suburbs, a hotbed of the Hezbollah movement.
Witnesses reported more than 20 attacks. The Lebanese Health Ministry said at least 11 people were killed in central Beirut neighbourhoods.
Netanyahu said the ceasefire deal would be submitted to the cabinet on Tuesday evening.
Israel has been fighting for more than a year on several fronts, against Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Hezbollah has struck northern Israel almost daily since the beginning of the Gaza war more than a year ago. Israel responded with massive airstrikes and, at the end of September, a ground offensive into southern Lebanon.
The war between Israel and Hezbollah has killed almost 3,800 people in Lebanon over the last year, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
Following Netanyahu’s address, Lebanon’s acting Prime Minister Najib Mikati called for the ceasefire to be urgently implemented.
He called Israel’s attacks on Beirut “hysterical.”
