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Lebanon’s army has accused Israel of violating a ceasefire with Hizbollah after Israeli forces launched an air strike and shelled several Lebanese border villages, testing the staying power of the fragile truce.
Israel said its air strike — its first since the truce came into force on Wednesday — targeted “terrorist activity” at a site it said was used by the militant group to store rockets in southern Lebanon.
The Israeli military also fired on what it described as Hizbollah militants in multiple villages — including the use of a drone strike in one attack — whom it accused of “breaching the conditions of the ceasefire”, which went into effect on Wednesday after more than a year of conflict.
The Lebanese army in turn said Israel had “violated the agreement several times, through air violations and targeting Lebanese territory with various weapons” and added it would follow up “with the relevant authorities”.
Hizbollah is not reported to have launched its own strikes since the deal went into effect, but the Israeli fire and mutual recriminations highlighted the precariousness of the deal.
“The situation is very delicate and in these days we need to be extra cautious,” Andrea Tenenti, a spokesperson for the UN peacekeeping body Unifil, told the Financial Times.
The US-brokered ceasefire deal outlines a gradual withdrawal of Israeli and Hizbollah forces from southern Lebanon over the course of 60 days. The Lebanese army and Unifil troops are set to deploy widely in the region, which will be enforced by a US-led monitoring mechanism.
Israel has repeatedly warned it would act unilaterally to “enforce” the agreement and strike against Hizbollah if it decides the group is violating it. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a local television channel the Israeli army was enforcing the ceasefire “forcefully” and would be ready for “intensive war” if there were significant breaches.
Thursday’s attacks came as tens of thousands of the more than 1.2mn displaced Lebanese sought to return home, despite Israeli military warnings that anyone travelling below a line of villages about 7km from the disputed border, known as the Blue Line, would “put themselves in danger”.
Two people were injured by an Israeli shell that struck the village of Markaba near the border, Lebanese state media reported.
A Hizbollah member of parliament, Hassan Fadlallah, accused Israel of “attacking those returning to the border villages”. “There are violations today by Israel,” he said.
As the shelling called the ceasefire into question, the speaker of Lebanon’s parliament announced it would hold a session to elect a president on January 9, jolting the political deadlock that has persisted for two years.
The post of president has been empty since 2022 and Lebanon has faced a leadership crisis, with the state led by a caretaker government through the more than year-long war between the Hizbollah and Israel.
Nabih Berri, the Speaker, told a legislative session: “I had promised myself that as soon as there is a ceasefire, I will set a date for a session to elect a president of the republic.”
Lebanon’s presidency is reserved for a Maronite Christian by convention under the country’s confessional political system. MPs and political blocs put forward candidates, who must secure backing from two-thirds of parliamentarians, then win a simple majority in subsequent voting rounds.
Political paralysis had gripped Lebanon in the year before the war — which was triggered when Iran-backed Hizbollah began firing into Israel after Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack — as no parliamentary alliance could secure enough support for their preferred candidates.
Electoral sessions were delayed because the Hizbollah-Amal parliamentary bloc was unable to amass enough support for their candidate, said Diana Menhem, acting director of reform advocacy group Kulluna Irada.
The war was then used as a pretext by political parties to postpone the election, she said. “They all wanted to see how this [war] would end, in order for them to build on it.”
The choice of candidate will be shaped by rival camps divided over the future president’s support for Hizbollah keeping its weapons, analysts said.
The real selection of candidates happens in political negotiations behind closed doors, with the parliamentary vote a mere formality, said Sami Atallah, founding director of Beirut-based The Policy Initiative.
While Hizbollah’s weaponry had long been the chief fracturing line, the new ceasefire agreement — which called for an eventual disarmament of non-state militant groups — had added fresh complications, he said.
“Hizbollah’s weapons [were] before the war, and remain right now, a major issue, because Hizbollah wants a president that is actually friendly to the resistance,” Atallah said.
Nearly 4,000 Lebanese and 140 Israelis have been killed since the fighting broke out. About 60,000 Israelis have also been evacuated from the north of their country because of Hizbollah rocket, missile and drone fire.
The Lebanese health ministry said 78 people were killed on Tuesday, the final day before the ceasefire went into effect.
The offensive dealt devastating blows to Hizbollah, killing its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah and damaging its weapons and infrastructure.
Cartography by Cleve Jones
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