Separating Hezbollah, Gaza conflicts key to Israel cease-fire deal: US envoy

U.S.presidential envoy Amos Hochstein, who played a pivotal role in brokering this week’s cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon, on Wednesday emphasized the importance of delinking Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah from the war against Hamas in Gaza.In an interview with Channel 12 News, Hochstein said that “the real issue was the linkage that Hezbollah had made between Lebanon and Gaza, and being able to break that linkage, delinking the two conflicts, was the key to solving this one.”However, in a Wednesday briefing for the American Jewish community, Hochstein said that the Lebanon deal could pave the way to a deal to release the hostages still being held by Hamas.“The Lebanese deal here opens an opportunity on the hostage deal,” he said.

“They [Hamas] wake up this morning at 4 a.m.with Hezbollah, that used to be actively supportive of Hamas in the northern front, cutting a deal and ending that conflict.”Hochstein in the Channel 12 interview also addressed reports that he had told Jerusalem and Beirut that it was “now or never” to get the deal done, denying that he used that language.“I did say that there is a window of opportunity to do this now and either we did it—and I thought that all the conditions were there—and that if they did not want to do it now, they would have to wait for a new president to come in, which probably meant March or April, as a new administration doesn’t do things right away and that could come as an opportunity loss.

So it was a moment of opportunity here,” he said.He also addressed concerns about the agreement’s implementation, given the failures of U.N.Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War and was supposed to disarm Hezbollah and force it north of the Litani River.“I’ve been openly critical of Resolution 1701 […] because I thought it was very nice words but there was nothing that was set in place to enforce it, frankly, on either side […] so we were determined to be ab...