Israel agrees CEASEFIRE with Hezbollah after decimating terrorists with pager bombs, invasion & assassinating leaders

ISRAEL has approved a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah after it decimated the terrorists with pager bombs and assassinated its leaders.

The halt to fighting follows Israel's invasion against the Lebanese-based terror group in September as it carried out its ruthless response to the horror October 7 terror attack.

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The Israeli cabinet approved the deal on Tuesday night with the ceasefire now set to begin at 4am local time (2am GMT) Wednesday.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu declared Israel had crippled Hezbollah to a point citizens in the north could return to their homes.

Netanyahu claimed to have “severed the head of the snake” by killing leader Hassan Nasrallah and pushed his Lebanese enemy “decades back.”

He said: "Hezbollah chose to attack us from there on the eighth of October. A year has passed - this is no longer the same Hezbollah.

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"We eliminated all the senior members of the organisation, we destroyed most of its missiles and rockets, we eliminated thousands of terrorists and we destroyed the underground and terrorist infrastructures near our border - infrastructures that were built over years.

"We attacked strategic targets throughout Lebanon... Lebanon is not the same. All of this would have sounded like science fiction, but it is not."

But Netanyahu vowed to strike Hezbollah again if it were to break the ceasefire.

He said: "If Hezbollah tries to attack us, if it arms itself and rebuilds infrastructure near the border, we will attack.

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"For every violation, we will attack with might."

He added that there were three reasons to pursue a ceasefire: to focus on Iran, replenish depleted arms supplies and give the army a rest, and finally to isolate Hamas.

Reuters reported the deal would involve Israeli troops withdrawing from southern Lebanon and Lebanon's army to deploy to the area currently controlled by the IDF.

Hezbollah would then have to end its presence south of Lebanon's Litani river about 20 miles from the border with Israel.

Israel believes that would shield its citizens living in the north of the country from short-range rocket strikes and another October 7-style surprise terror attack across the border.

A ceasefire with Hezbollah is not a ceasefire with Hamas - who carried out the October 7 terror attack and who Israel is still fighting in Gaza.

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Netanyahu vowed to continue the war against Hamas and return the hostages who remain in Gaza and touted the resilience of northern Israelis who had to flee their homes and Hezbollah's rockets.

Both of those groups are proxies of Israel's arch-enemy Iran and have acted in concert.

US president Joe Biden praised the deal and said the US would renew its push for peace across the region.

Hezbollah meanwhile said it had accepted a deal last week.

Mahmoud Komati, a politician linked to the group, said: "We need to see if it is the same deal that the Lebanese authorities approved... no deal will be accepted that violates Lebanon sovereignty... tomorrow it is the job of Lebanese authorities to make sure it is the same deal that was approved last week."

Israeli strikes on Lebanon during the war have killed at least 3,823 people and injured 15,000 since last October, the Lebanese health ministry said today.

Swathes of northern Israel have also become ghost towns since Hezbollah began daily rocket barrages in support of its Hamas allies following the October 7 attacks last year.

Israel hit back in September with a withering show of force - killing the Iran-backed groups’s leader Hassan Nasrallah and all of his top lieutenants.

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As truce talks intensified today, exchanges of cross-border fire between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah have also increased, with Israel reporting around 250 projectiles launched at its territory on Sunday alone.

Strikes hit Hezbollah's south Beirut stronghold shortly after the Israeli military called for people to evacuate.

Footage showed multiple plumes of smoke rising from the area, a day after the Lebanese health ministry said Israeli air strikes killed 31 people, mostly in southern Lebanon.

Throughout the war, Tel Aviv has decimated the terrorist forces with its troops, as well as Mossad's powerful pager bomb plot earlier this year.

In September, the spy agency carried out mass sabotage against Hezbollah when it blew up hundreds of pagers carried by the terror group.

The blitz inside Lebanon sent a message to Iran and its proxies that Israel could attack hundreds of people at once.

And just days ago, an Israeli rocket blew up an entire tower block in Lebanon’s capital in a fireball and cloud of smoke.

It was Israel’s latest attack in its war against Hezbollah as they seek to destroy the terror group which has launched waves of attacks from across the border in Lebanon.

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Tel Aviv had vowed to wipe out the group after 60,000 citizens were evacuated from northern Israel.

The Israeli Air Force (IDF) hits Hezbollah targets from the sky, whilst the IDF operates on the ground.

The offensive was originally planned to last around a fortnight but was extended as ground troops in the south and war jets extended their mission.

Earlier this month, Israeli Defence Forces said more than 120 Hezbollah targets throughout Lebanon were hit over 24 hours, including a command centre in the Nabatieh governorate.

More than a million Lebanese civilians have been forced to flee the fighting as the World Bank estimated that the war triggered by Hamas’s October 7 terror has cost £6.3 billion.

And this month, the IDF also killed Hezbollah's chief spokesman in an airstrike in central Beirut.

Mohammed Afif al-Naboulsi was wiped out after a strike on the Arab socialist Baath party's office, which also killed another three.

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Despite the peace in the north, there remains no end in sight to the war in the smashed wasteland of Gaza, southern Israel, where operations continue and Hamas continues to hold scores of hostages.

It comes as arrest warrants have been issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence chief, accusing them of war crimes.

In a bizarre move another warrant was issued against a former leader of Hamas - who is thought to have been assassinated in an Israeli airstrike earlier this year.

Former Hamas boss Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al Masri - also known as Mohammed Deif - is thought to have been killed in an airstrike on Gaza in July.

Israel has previously accused the International Criminal Court - which issued the warrants - of being anti-Semitic.

The warrants accuse each man of crimes against humanity after more than a year of brutal war in Gaza.

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Hamas launched a horrific massacre in Israel on October 7 2023 - slaughtering some 1,200 people and kidnapping 250 more.

Israel then invaded the Gaza Strip with the aim of destroying Hamas and according to local health officials, some 44,000 people have died there since.

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