Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Thursday that a November 2024 ceasefire with Hezbollah was signed due to pressure from the Biden administration, including threats of a weapons embargo and a hostile U.N. Security Council resolution.
“Hezbollah took a heavy blow in ‘Operation Northern Arrows’ but was not defeated,” Smotrich wrote in a Hebrew statement on social media outlining his assessment of the current war.
“We knew this when we signed the ceasefire, which was the correct thing at the time, both because of threats from the Biden administration of a U.N. Security Council resolution against us and an arms embargo, and because of operational and resource constraints,” he added.
The 2024 war between Israel and Hezbollah began on Sept. 23 and raged for two months before a U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect on Nov. 24. The administration of then-President Joe Biden pushed Israel to agree to a ceasefire, warning that further escalation could lead to limits on U.S. weapons supplies and diplomatic action at the U.N. Security Council.
In the current war, Smotrich said Hezbollah’s military capabilities have been significantly degraded, with Israel having effectively pushed the group “20 years back—from a terror army to a guerrilla organization.”
He stressed, however, that Israel still needs to vanquish Hezbollah militarily.
“The IDF has operational plans prepared to defeat Hezbollah, and we will not be able to end the current campaign without implementing them and removing the threat from the residents of the north and the State of Israel,” he wrote.
Smotrich argued that diplomatic arrangements cannot dismantle terrorist organizations. “There is no outsourcing the elimination of terrorism,” he said, adding that the same principle applies to Hamas in Gaza.
He said that weakening Iran—the main backer of Hezbollah and Hamas—remains a central objective of the current war.
“The fall of the regime in Iran would greatly ease the task of defeating both Hezbollah and Hamas,” Smotrich wrote.
