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US-based news agency the Hill, which broke the news of the ceasefire first, said Netanyahu and Biden will announce the agreement, at separate intervals.
The Israeli security cabinet Tuesday (local time) announced its agreement to a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The ceasefire will begin Wednesday morning, US-based news outlet The Hill said in a report.
The Hill, which broke the news of the ceasefire first, said Netanyahu and Biden will announce the agreement, at separate intervals.
The formal announcement came after a voting is conducted among Israel’s security Cabinet on Tuesday evening, news agency Reuters said in a separate report. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a speech, however, said he is presenting the announcement to full cabinet soon.
“We’re changing the face of the Middle East. A good agreement is an agreement that can be enforced,” Netanyahu said in his speech to Israelis.
“One of the primary reasons of the ceasefire is to isolate Hamas and secure the return of the hostages,” he said. “We have pushed Hezbollah back by decades, it would have sounded like fiction three months ago, but we did it,” he said, referring to the operations Israel carried out to eliminate Hezbollah’s top leaders.
The Hill said Biden will make an on-camera message about the ceasefire.
The war in Lebanon followed nearly a year of limited cross-border exchanges of fire begun by Hezbollah.
The Lebanese group said it was acting in support of Hamas after the Palestinian group’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the war in Gaza.
Lebanon says at least 3,799 people have been killed in the country since October 2023, most of them in the past several weeks.
On the Israeli side, the hostilities with Hezbollah have killed at least 82 soldiers and 47 civilians, authorities say.
The initial exchanges forced tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes, and Israeli officials have said they are fighting so they can return safely.
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Washington D.C., United States of America (USA)