Israelis sceptical of ceasefire with Hezbollah
Alon Pinkas, a former ambassador and consul-general from Israel, says Israelis have “doubts” about a possible ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. This is because they’ve been “misled and misinformed” by Netanyahu and his government multiple times, Pinkas told Al Jazeera.
He said previous ceasefire agreements with Hezbollah proved to be “circumstantial” rather than “durable”.
Despite this, Netanyahu is still expected to declare victory, Pinkas said. “He’s going to say Israel degraded Hezbollah significantly, that Israel hit Hezbollah’s missile arsenal significantly, that Israel targeted most of Hezbollah’s political and military leadership successfully,” Pinkas said.
In reality, Netanyahu has allowed Hezbollah to “regroup, re-establish their leadership and even rearm”, he said.
‘Mistakes of evaluation’ of Hezbollah’s strength by Israel’s leaders
Military analyst Elijah Magnier says despite talk of a Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire it will be “the most difficult night ever since 2006” for civilians in both Lebanon and Israel.
When the cessation of hostilities was announced in 2006, hundreds of strikes from both sides occurred for the next two days with “strategic, symbolic, and psychological implications”, he said.
In the current war, Israel’s leadership underestimated Hezbollah’s staying power with hundreds of missiles and drones launched into the country over the past few weeks, said Magnier.
“There were mistakes of evaluation by Israeli thinking that they had defeated Hezbollah and were just about to destroy it completely. And this is when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised his objective to change the whole Middle East,” he said.
After 52 days of heavy bombardment and a ground invasion of Lebanon, Israel has not achieved even half of what it did during the war in 2006, Magnier told Al Jazeera. After a major Hezbollah rocket barrage at the weekend, “this is when the Israelis realised the objective cannot be met and a cessation of hostilities is much better and they both can claim victory.”
