US President Donald Trump says Israel and Lebanon have agreed to a 10‑day ceasefire, offering a rare pause in fighting after weeks of deadly strikes and mass displacement in southern Lebanon. The truce began at 5pm US Eastern time on Thursday, which is midnight in Lebanon and 7am Friday AEST.
Trump revealed the deal on Truth Social after speaking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, writing that the two leaders had agreed that “in order to achieve PEACE between their Countries, they will formally begin a 10 Day CEASEFIRE at 5 P.M. EST”. He said he would invite both men to Washington for “meaningful talks”, and tasked Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Joint Chiefs chair Dan Caine with working on a longer‑term arrangement.
In Lebanon, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam welcomed the announcement in a post on X, calling the truce “a central Lebanese demand we have pursued since the first day of the war” and tying it to this week’s rare direct talks between Lebanese and Israeli officials in Washington. Those meetings, hosted by Rubio, brought envoys from the two countries into the same room for the first time in decades as the US tried to calm the Lebanon front while it negotiates separately with Iran.
Netanyahu confirmed Israel had signed on but stressed that Israeli forces would stay on Lebanese territory within a “security zone” extending 10 kilometres from the border, describing it as “stronger, more powerful, more continuous, and more solid” than before. He said any future peace deal would need to include the disarming of Hezbollah and a formal agreement with Beirut, while rejecting Hezbollah’s demands for a full withdrawal and a “quiet‑for‑quiet” ceasefire.
Hezbollah MP Ibrahim al‑Moussawi told AFP the group would “cautiously adhere” to the US‑brokered deal if Israel halted all attacks and did not use the pause “to carry out any assassinations”. In a separate statement, Hezbollah urged people not to rush home to areas hit by Israeli strikes “until the course of events becomes fully clear”, warning that Israel had “a history of violating pledges”.
The human cost of getting to this point is already huge. The Lebanese Health Ministry says more than 2,000 people have been killed and 7,000 wounded in the space of just six weeks.
The ceasefire is deeply tangled with the wider US‑Iran talks. Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf told his Lebanese counterpart that a truce in Lebanon was “just as important” as the one with Washington, saying Tehran had been “striving to compel our enemies to establish a permanent ceasefire in all the conflict zones”.
At the same time, Israel’s public broadcaster KAN has portrayed the move as Trump “forcing” a ceasefire on Netanyahu to bolster his Iran diplomacy, while former defence minister Avigdor Liberman has called it a “betrayal of the residents of the north” who have endured weeks of Hezbollah rocket fire.
For people in Lebanon who have lived through earlier wars and previous ceasefires, the next 10 days will be about whether this pause actually holds.
The last truce between Israel and Hezbollah, agreed upon in late 2024, was overshadowed by accusations of near‑daily Israeli breaches.
After weeks of bombardment, any quiet that arrives now will be fragile, and no one can say how long it will last.
Lead image: Getty
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