In the end days of his administration, US President Joe Biden appears to have jointly pulled off a ceasefire deal to end fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and remove Lebanon from the battlefield.

Despite opposition from his far-right allies at home, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed the ceasefire brokered by Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron. “This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities. What is left of Hezbollah and other terrorist organisations will not be allowed, I emphasise, will not be allowed to threaten the security of Israel again,” Netanyahu said.

Hours before Israeli ministers approved the deal, its military carried out a massive barrage of airstrikes, attacking Beirut’s central and Hezbollah-dominated neighbourhoods south of the city.

Nearly 14 months ago, Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel to support its ally, Hamas, the day after Palestinian terrorists attacked Israel, killing 1200 Israelis and taking 250 hostages. The conflict escalated last September when hundreds of Hezbollah pagers exploded in an attack attributed to Israel. Israel then killed much of Hezbollah’s leadership in airstrikes, launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon, and bombed the north of the country. The fighting displaced over a million Lebanese and tens of thousands of Israelis, killed more than 3000 Lebanese and 100 Israelis and upended the regional balance of power.

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Israel and Hezbollah last fought a major war in 2006, a 34-day battle that killed more than 1000 Lebanese and 150 Israelis. This week’s ceasefire is basically a rerun of UN Resolution 1701, the deal that ended that conflict and ushered in 18 years of uneasy peace.

Netanyahu agreed to the ceasefire to focus on the Iranian threat, allow Israeli forces to refresh, and separate the conflict from the war in Gaza. Under the deal’s terms, Israel will withdraw entirely from southern Lebanon, while Hezbollah will move its heavy weaponry north of the Litani River, about 25 kilometres north of the border. During a 60-day transition phase, the Lebanese army will deploy to the buffer border zone alongside the existing UN peacekeeping force.

Hezbollah had insisted it would not agree to a ceasefire until the war in Gaza ended, but it dropped that condition, and now Hamas has been left isolated. The deal will not have any immediate direct effect on fighting in Gaza, where at least 42,000 Palestinians have been reportedly killed, and Hamas still holds dozens of hostages. The conflict there remains intractable despite US efforts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.