Why was ceasefire easier with Hezbollah than Hamas?

Although the ceasefire with Hezbollah may well not last and is by no means being perfectly observed, the two sides were at least able to get there. Why was it so much easier for Israel and Hezbollah to come to some arrangement than it has been with Hamas?

Although Lebanon has been struggling financially for years and its government isn’t united, it still does have a functioning government which exercises some authority. Moreover, the government desperately wanted to end the war and Lebanon’s suffering. That meant that there was someone on the other side to deal with and who was keen to come to some arrangement to end the war. Although Israel and Lebanon don’t have diplomatic relations, negotiations took place thorough United States (US) intermediation.

Then, although Hezbollah is a powerful actor in the Lebanese government, other political parties are represented both in parliament and the government. There’s no doubt a large majority of them and the Lebanese people wanted to end the war and come to a deal.

Lebanon also has a long and distinguished cultural history, and a long association with both the US and France as the ex-colonial power. They both wanted to avoid the destruction of Lebanon, and were able to apply pressure on Israel and Lebanon.

Unlike in Gaza, the US was the main mediator, and has a good relationship with both governments. There’s also a history of successful US mediation. The US was the mediator in the 2022 agreement that, for the first time, set out maritime boundaries between Israel and Lebanon.

In this case, an agreement seemingly suited all parties. On the Israeli side, Israel had probably achieved a big chunk of what it could have hoped to militarily. Also, the ceasefire terms dictating that Hezbollah must retreat behind the Litani River allowed Israel to achieve its strategic aim of making the north safer.

On the Hezbollah side, there was strong domestic pressure from the rest of Lebanese society to end the war, and a ceasefire allows it to regroup.

On the US side, the ceasefire gave the Biden administration one final foreign policy success.

Although there are still some minor border disputes between Lebanon and Israel, in the main, this isn’t an issue either side wishes to go to war over. In reality, the borders between the two are pretty clear and both sides are probably happy for the status quo to continue.

Israel doesn’t really intend to occupy southern Lebanon if the ceasefire holds. Of course, the same doesn’t hold for Gaza, where all indications point to Israel intending to occupy the Netzarim and Philadelphi corridors for the foreseeable future in some form.

The biggest block in terms of Gaza, is the fact that Hamas still holds almost 100 hostages, making things much more complex and the negotiations far more intricate.

While the deal with Hezbollah was mostly transactional – both sides to stop firing at each other and Hezbollah to withdraw from the border so as not to threaten civilians in the north, with Hamas holding the hostages, it now comes down to excruciating details: how many Hamas will release up front and over what time period the balance will go free; how many Hamas captives will be released in return; who they will be; their rank; and so on.

The hostages give Hamas leverage, and allied to the fact that it wants to survive the war as a functional unit and that the domestic pressure on it to end the war does not appear to be that intense, it means it’s still prepared to continue fighting.

Another vital issue is that although Hezbollah has been responsible for the deaths of more than 120 Israelis in the north, it wasn’t part of the 7 October massacre and atrocities carried out by Hamas. That not only made it easier for Israel to strike a deal with it, but Israel’s objectives were more limited.

As discussed above, these included getting Hezbollah to stop firing at the north; degrade its operational capabilities to do so in future; and get it to withdraw behind the Litani River.

With Hamas having carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and threatening further such outrages, Israel’s objectives are far more maximalist. It wants to ensure Hamas’s removal from power and prevent it from carrying out a similar type of attack in future. That can seemingly be done only by trying to control Gaza’s security going forward and remaining in some form of control over its borders. That again makes the negotiations much less transactional and much more intricate than they were with Hezbollah.

Due to the hostages still being held and the 7 October massacre, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced much less political opposition from within his own cabinet to a deal with Hezbollah than he did in respect of Hamas. In fact, his government could fall over a deal with Hamas, which wasn’t the case with the Hezbollah ceasefire.

Without doubt, an end to the war in Gaza will come – and maybe in time for the inauguration of Donald Trump – but the negotiations getting there have been and will continue to be an exhaustive and arduous process.

• Harry Joffe is a Johannesburg tax and trust attorney.