Israel and Hezbollah renew ceasefire after flare-up, but IDF to stay in southern Lebanon

Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire on Friday afternoon, a US official said, after another flare-up in southern Lebanon that saw four Israeli soldiers and dozens of Lebanese casualties.

The renewed truce appeared as fragile as ever, as it didn’t see Israel pull out of the large buffer zone it established in southern Lebanon — one that Hezbollah has used to justify continued attacks on troops stationed there as well as on northern Israeli towns across the border.

The latest deal was brokered by the US and Qatar through talks with Israel and Iran respectively, a senior US official said in a statement to reporters. While Hezbollah sources confirmed the truce, Israel refrained from doing so publicly as of early Friday evening.

The US official notably did not even try to hide the fact that mediators relied on Iran to secure the ceasefire — an admission of Tehran’s ability to influence events in Lebanon.

The US and Israel had previously stressed the importance of detaching Iran from events in Lebanon, even if they privately recognized Tehran’s control over its terror proxy.

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US President Donald Trump’s administration has even brokered talks between Israel and the Lebanese government that have been used to announce previous ceasefires between Israel and Hezbollah, even if Beirut’s ability to influence the Iran-backed militia was limited at best.

It was that process Israel declared it was committed to when Ambassador to Israel Yechiel Leiter said Thursday night that Jerusalem would hold its fire in Lebanon if Hezbollah did the same.

But with Iran warning that Israel’s operations in southern Lebanon amount to a violation of the memorandum of understanding inked with the US this week, the US and Qatar apparently decided to go straight to Tehran to broker Friday’s agreement.

It’s unclear if or for how long Iran will accept the deal, given that the issue wasn’t just Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah but also the Israel Defense Forces’s presence in southern Lebanon that Tehran has argued violates the MOU, which stipulates “an immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon.”

Iran has reportedly been citing Israel’s continued operations in Lebanon as its reason for holding back on sending a delegation to Switzerland for the first round of technical talks under the MOU, which a US official said was initially supposed to take place on Friday. A time has not yet been publicly announced.

While Israel’s continued operations have also sparked unprecedented public criticism from the Trump administration, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Friday that the IDF would remain in southern Lebanon, arguing that the buffer zone is necessary to protect its citizens in the north from Hezbollah attacks. Israel established a similar buffer zone decades ago in 1985, but pulled out in 2000 due to persistent IDF casualties of the kind it is now facing in south Lebanon on a near-daily basis.

Earlier Friday, the IDF announced that four of its soldiers had been killed overnight after a suspected drone or anti-tank missile struck their tank in the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Tebnit.

Israel responded by carrying out 150 strikes on what it said were Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon, with Netanyahu declaring in a statement that the IDF had killed dozens of Hezbollah terrorists in those strikes.

The Lebanese health ministry later said that those Israeli airstrikes killed at least 47 people and wounded 97 others.

The dead included at least seven women and two children, though the figures did not otherwise differentiate between civilians and combatants.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned Israel’s strikes, saying that the “killing and destruction constitute a dangerous escalation.”

“It effectively targets all ongoing efforts to consolidate the ceasefire and end the war,” a statement from the Lebanese presidency said, noting the “recent developments” between the US and Iran.

Lebanese Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah told Reuters on Friday that Iran had informed the terror group that talks with the US could not continue without the implementation of a comprehensive ceasefire.

He called on the Lebanese government to reject any direct negotiations with Israel as Israeli attacks on Lebanon continue. He said Washington bore responsibility for ensuring Israel halted its attacks and implemented the terms of the agreement.

Hezbollah itself also issued a statement, vowing to defend Lebanon’s territory and people against Israeli attacks.

“The Islamic Resistance will remain vigilant against any aggression. Its fighters will defend their land and people,” the statement said. It also denied Israeli accusations that Hezbollah had violated the truce, and instead insisted “the enemy has never complied with any ceasefire agreement.”

Meanwhile, Netanyahu faced pressure from his own government to respond even more harshly, with far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir declaring that “all of Lebanon must burn” after Israel’s military announced the deaths of four soldiers from the Hezbollah attack.

“With all due respect to the Americans, Israel must make it clear to the entire world that the blood of our sons and the security of our citizens are not up for bargaining. All of Lebanon must burn,” Ben Gvir said in a statement.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted a screenshot of Ben Gvir’s remarks, tagged Trump and US Vice President JD Vance and accused Israel of wanting “permanent war.”

“This is not a rant by a random genocidal lunatic. It’s a public post by the national security minister of the Israeli regime. The genocidal death cult headquartered in Tel Aviv is a threat to all of humanity. It threatens all humans. Its only interest is permanent war,” Araghchi wrote on X.

Hezbollah, which has kept up incessant drone and rocket attacks on Israel’s north, dragged Lebanon into the regional war with Iran in early March by firing rockets at Israel for the first time since the November 2024 Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire deal.

Israel responded with massive airstrikes and a full-scale invasion in Lebanon, subsequently establishing a buffer zone that currently runs up to 10 kilometers (6 miles) deep from the border into Lebanese territory.

Hezbollah’s renewed attacks on Israel came in response to the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei at the start of the US-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran on February 28. The fighting in Iran entered a truce on April 8 even as Israel and Hezbollah continued exchanging fire.

Under the November 2024 Israel-Lebanon deal, which ended over a year of earlier hostilities initiated by Hezbollah, the Lebanese army was supposed to disarm the terror group. Beirut has so far failed to do so.

In the US-brokered Israeli-Lebanese talks that began in April, the sides affirmed their support for the 2024 agreement. Hezbollah, meanwhile, has slammed the Lebanese government for negotiating directly with Israel.