Israel kept attacking Lebanon after the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire was set to begin at 4pm local time on Friday. In Tyre, Heidi Pett reported, “It doesn’t feel much like a ceasefire,” as strikes continued after the deadline.
The Lebanese health ministry said the attacks that began at midnight on Friday killed at least 47 people and wounded 97 others. At least 12 Israeli air raids and continual artillery shelling hit southern Lebanon after the ceasefire deadline, turning the agreement into a test of whether either side would actually stop.
Lebanon and southern Lebanon
Officials and diplomats from the United States and the Gulf said the ceasefire would start at 4pm local time on Friday, and a Gulf diplomat said Israel and Hezbollah agreed to halt hostilities after Qatar, the United States and Iran brokered the ceasefire. A senior US official said the agreement had been reached through US and Qatari mediation, with Iran's help.
That set up a narrow practical question for people in Lebanon: whether the deadline would hold on the ground. Heidi Pett, reporting from Tyre, said, “Instead, there is a sense of deja vu. Each time a ceasefire is announced, we see a renewed burst of military activity on the ground.”
Israeli military and Hezbollah
The Israeli military spokesperson said on Friday that Israeli forces would retain operational freedom to respond to threats in southern Lebanon. A Hezbollah official told Al Jazeera that the ceasefire would hold if Israel abided by it.
Those positions do not match cleanly. Israel said it agreed to a ceasefire, but its military also said it would keep room to act against threats in southern Lebanon, while Hezbollah tied the ceasefire's durability to Israel's behavior. That leaves the ceasefire dependent not just on the signed understanding, but on how each side defines a violation once fire starts again.
Abbas Araghchi and Itamar Ben-Gvir
Abbas Araghchi said Israel's only interest is “permanent war” in a post on X responding to Itamar Ben-Gvir. Araghchi also described Ben-Gvir's post as “not a rant by a random genocidal lunatic” and called it “a public post by the national security minister of the Israeli regime.”
Ben-Gvir, after four Israeli soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon, called for Lebanon to be “burned.” The exchange sharpened the political backdrop around the ceasefire, but the immediate measure of whether the deal means anything remains on the ground in Lebanon, where strikes were still being reported after the deadline.
What happens next is not a speech but a halt: the ceasefire either stops the attacks in practice, or the next round of raids and shelling will define it as a broken truce from the start.
