(LONDON) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will convene his security cabinet on Tuesday and hold a vote on a cease-fire deal that could end more than a year of fighting across the Israeli-Lebanese border, an Israeli official told ABC News. The cabinet is expected to approve the U.S.-brokered deal.
Israeli airstrikes and Hezbollah launches continued regardless. Airstrikes again rocked the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiya on Tuesday, with the Israel Defense Forces reporting “large scale” attacks on the area shortly after issuing multiple evacuation orders. Another IDF strike hit a building in the central Basta neighborhood, which was also subject to an massive airstrike on Saturday.
The IDF reported at least 250 projectiles fired into Israel on Monday, with Hezbollah claiming multiple cross-border attacks on Israeli targets on Tuesday morning.
An Israeli source with knowledge of the deal’s details told ABC News that the 60-day cease-fire would see all Israeli forces withdraw from Lebanon in phases, with Hezbollah retreating beyond the Litani River around 18 miles north of the Israeli border.
Lebanese Armed Forces troops — with assistance from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon — will deploy to the south of the country to ensure that Hezbollah does not re-enter the area between the Israeli border and the Litani, the source said.
The U.S. will provide oversight on Hezbollah’s withdrawal and will also head a committee — joined by French and Arab partners — to monitor and verify the implementation of the cease-fire, the Israeli source added.
The cease-fire would be expected to come into force shortly after the agreement is announced — as early as Wednesday morning. The two Israeli sources involved in the talks who spoke with ABC News said the proposal has near-unanimous agreement from the security cabinet, though far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is expected to vote against it. His opposition will not torpedo the deal.
A parallel U.S.-Israeli agreement, though, suggests that any deal will not necessarily mean an end to all fighting.
The Israeli source with knowledge of the deal said the U.S. has pledged support for Israel’s right to strike anywhere in Lebanon against “critical” or “immediate” threats from Hezbollah or other militant groups.
Still, the possible cease-fire deal would be a major diplomatic achievement after nearly 14 months of war and almost 4,000 total deaths — the vast majority Lebanese — on both sides of the shared border.
Tens of thousands of Israelis have fled their homes in the north of the country, while a quarter of Lebanon’s population — around 1.2 million people — have been put under IDF evacuation orders.
U.S. officials have hinted at progress but refused to confirm details of any deal.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told journalists at a Monday briefing that the outcome of the talks is “up to the parties, not to us.”
“We don’t believe we have an agreement yet,” Miller said. “We believe we’re close to an agreement. We believe that we have narrowed the gap significantly, but there are still steps that we need to see taken, but we hope — we hope that we can get there.”
White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby was similarly cautious. “We believe that the trajectory of this is going in a very positive direction,” he told reporters Monday.
“But again, nothing is done until everything is done. Nothing’s all negotiated till everything is negotiated. And you know, we need to keep at the work to see it through so that we can actually get the ceasefire for which we’ve been working for for so long and so hard.”
ABC News’ Jordana Miller, Joe Simonetti, Ghazi Balkiz, Joe Simonetti, Chris Boccia and Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.
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