That is the dismal conclusion of Michael Rubin, who writes about the Middle East from his perch at the American Enterprise Institute. More of his view of the agreement can be found here: “Don’t Celebrate Israel’s Ceasefire with Hezbollah Yet,” by Michael Rubin, Middle East Forum, November 26, 2024:
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….
Hezbollah has taken root among Shia communities in Latin America and West Africa. It has become, along with its ally Syria, the largest drug trafficker in the world, smuggling fentanyl into Europe and into the Sunni Arab states of the Gulf. This provides it with billions of dollars annually to pay its combatants and to buy, or manufacture, weapons.
We’ll soon find out, in the next few months, if the ceasefire will last beyond the 60-day trial period to which Israel and Hezbollah have agreed. Already, the IDF has had to fire on several Hezbollah members who were trying to move into villages south of the Litani. Rubin sees nothing but trouble, with Hezbollah already raising funds from its many supporters in Shi’a communities outside the Middle East. That money will then allow it to rearm, keeping the weapons in northern Lebanon, where they won’t be considered to be a “direct threat” to Israel that, according to the letter given by the Americans to the Israelis, would be necessary to justify an Israeli attack. Of course, when Trump becomes president, he will likely decide to lower the bar for Israel, giving it the freedom to respond to any perceived threat from Hezbollah no matter how indirect or distant.
Walter Sieruk says
About that hoax of that so called “ceasefire agreement” schemed up by Joe Biden , it’s a disingenuous farce. The reason why this is so because that despicable old Biden really doesn’t want Israel to defeat Hezbollah is because Biden is a stooge ,tool and useful idiot of those Muslim tyrants of Iran. For in power in that hostile and vicious Islamic regime backs and Hezbollah and supplies deadly weapons to that murderous jihad entity.
This exposes just how horrendously terribly treacherous Biden actually is.
Creepy old Joe Biden doesn’t anything at all about those three Americans who had been killed by rockets supplied to Iran’s proxy jihad terror/murder entities.
Likewise Biden doesn’t care, one little bit , that which it some down to that subject Iran is just a responsible for those dead Americans and those jihad stooge groups of that “mullah regime.”
All that despicable traitor Biden cares about is appeasing those Muslim despots of Iran by providing to them everything they demand.
Joe Biden is either an incompetent feeble -minded fool or a traitorous treasonous villain.
Which even the case with him, Biden by giving away everything to those tyrants of that Islamic regime of Iran who such spiteful enemies of the United States that they publicly refer to her as “the Great Satan” and likewise brainwash and then incite the Iranian people to chant, over and over again “Death to America” reveals much about the sinister and insidious character of subversive creepy old Joe.
Therefore, to the very end of his term in office Biden continues appeasing supporting and further upholding that anti-American, anti-Israel vicious and hostile tyrannical Islamic regime.
Therefore, he has to be a very evil, un-American very despicable and dangerous man.
carpediadem says
Obama stopped investigation of the Hezbies criminal activities. Any Hezbie money in Biden Obama coffers?
࿗Infidel࿘ says
There are two advantages of this ceasefire that I see:
⮞ It helps Israel sit out the rest of the Biden administration, while the latter toots its horn about its “success”. The alternative would probably have been action at the UN
⮞ Right now, sunni rebels in Syria, who had been dormant the last 6 years, have started rising again in Aleppo, given that Hizbullah, which provided the bulk of ground troops in Syria, has been heavily crippled
Bad as President Bashar Assad is, the sunni alternatives will be worse. If one sees Alien vs Predator like situations in these conflicts, a good litmus test is to see what the local Christians in those places support. In Syria, the Christians, Kurds and Druze all support the Alawite-led Ba’athist regime. The alternative would be either Ahrar al-Sham, which is a sunni group only interested in local, rather than global jihad, or Jabhat al-Nusra (until recently an al Qaeda franchise in Syria) or Jaish al-Islam, another jihadist group
For this reason, while the Syrians fight them, this time they can’t get support from the Russians, who have rather been drawing troops from Syria for the war in Ukraine, nor the Iranians. Best thing the Syrians can do is to pull all Hizbullah forces out of Lebanon and deploy them in Aleppo and anywhere else in Syria that the sunni groups are doing their uprisings. That is the only reason that the Israelis should let up – so that Hizbullah fighters can leave Lebanon, go into Syria and actually do something useful. Once done, Israel should put pressure on Lebanon to ensure that those Hizbullah fighters don’t get to return
MD Anthony says
Watch Biden get a Nobel Peace prize – that’s ALL THIS IS ABOUT
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Has this year’s Nobel laureates been announced? Somehow, I’ve missed all that (not for trying, though)
tgusa says
I dont know about anyone else but after my long lifetime I am tiring of this back and forth BS. Its like in the movie Casablanca where the Ingrid Bergman character says to the piano playing Dooley Wilson character, play it again Sam. She actually says, play it Sam, but you get the drift I think.
Walter Sieruk says
Joe Biden another thing that is wrong with and about Joe Biden concerning the Bible land, which is Israel . Biden said that he’s “a Christian” but he denies that Jews prayers at Judaism’s holiest site is appropriate, is Biden so very ignorant and outright stupid that he doesn’t know that Jesus Himself was a Jew ? Maybe Biden does know that but being a godless and wicked man doesn’t’ care.
Likewise Biden keeps on pushing for a for a division of the land State of Israel , which is so false called “the two state” solution.
Biden so very ignorant or outright un-Christian that Jesus Himself would not approve ,at the of the division of the State of Israel into two parts
For Biden’s fool proposal clearly contradicts the Wisdom of Jesus Who taught that “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.” Mark 3:24. [N.E.B.]
Maybe Biden does know that but being a godless and wicked man doesn’t’ care.