The Israeli military has intensified operations across the occupied West Bank, targeting Palestinian militant cells, imposing roadblocks and cutting communities off from the outside world.

The sudden expansion of Israeli security operations in the West Bank has killed at least 10 people and follows the start of the delicate ceasefire process in Gaza, by which Israeli hostages are released in stages and will also see the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces.

The move also comes as the Israeli right, and many in the settler movement, feel emboldened by the words of some officials in the Trump administration who have suggested Israel has the right to annex much or all of the West Bank, home to more than three million Palestinians.

What’s happening in the West Bank

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has spoken of a new dynamic in the West Bank, saying the military will adopt tactics learned in the Gaza offensive in its efforts to eradicate militant groups and, in his words, “ensure that terrorism does not return.”

The Jenin refugee camp in the north of the West Bank, a sprawling area of narrow alleys that has long been a bastion of militant factions, is front and center of the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) latest campaign.

Katz said Tuesday that Operation “Iron Wall” would “eliminate terrorists and terror infrastructure in the camp, ensuring that terrorism does not return to the camp after the operation is over – the first lesson from the method of repeated raids in Gaza.”

The latest IDF operations have involved building more roadblocks across the West Bank. The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission said Thursday there are now nearly 900 military checkpoints, including more than 173 iron gates installed since October 2023.

Al-Roub said the IDF operation was “one of the biggest and most intense” yet launched: “We are talking over 20,000 people have been displaced. Many have been arrested.”

Palestinian television reported Thursday that the IDF had established roadblocks near Ramallah and sealed off one village in the area. Additionally, it said military checkpoints in the Nablus area had been reinforced, leaving thousands of people stranded amid lengthy waits.

People were also unable to leave Jericho, where military checkpoints had been closed. Palestinian journalists reported Thursday that tear gas had been used against people waiting at a Jericho checkpoint.

One woman had died of a heart attack at a checkpoint near Hebron after the IDF prevented her from being transferred to hospital, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported Wednesday.

“Most of the movement from the south and north of the West Bank is paralyzed while illegal Israeli settlers move freely and continue to attack Palestinian cars on the roads,” he said.

“We are seeing disturbing patterns of unlawful use of force in the West Bank that is unnecessary, indiscriminate and disproportionate. This echoes the tactics Israeli forces have employed in Gaza,” said Angelita Caredda, Middle East and North Africa regional director for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

The IDF said Thursday that the checkpoints were “a tool we use in the fight against terror, enabling civilian movement while providing a layer of screening to prevent terrorists from escaping.”

How does the ceasefire affect the situation in the West Bank?

The operation began two days after the first stage of the Gaza ceasefire began and demonstrates a shift in the Israeli government’s focus.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Tuesday: “We have begun to change the security concept in Judea and Samaria [the Biblical term many Israelis use to describe the West Bank] and in the campaign to eradicate terrorism in the region.”

He also claimed the cabinet had decided that security in the West Bank had become an official war goal for Israel. The Prime Minister’s Office did not confirm the move.

The truce in Gaza has allowed Israeli security forces to concentrate on the West Bank, where groups aligned with Hamas have become more active. There is a risk, however, that intensive Israeli military action across the West Bank will put the Gaza ceasefire under strain.

Katz has frequently alleged that Iran is behind the surge in militant activity in the West Bank and is supplying weapons to the groups.

“We will not allow Judea and Samaria to become like Gaza or southern Lebanon… We will act to cut off Iran’s tentacles in the refugee camps in the West Bank and ensure the security of the communities and residents.”

Israeli officials have said that the Palestinian Authority (PA) has been unable to confront and subdue militant groups. An operation in December by the Palestinian security forces against militants in Jenin yielded little progress. The militant factions include the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Qassem Brigades, who together fight under the banner of the Jenin Battalion.

Israel’s Channel 11 quoted a senior military source Thursday as saying, “The PA did what they could. We recognized the need to act against the terrorists’ capabilities, we are no longer waiting for their intentions. Our goal is to neutralize the Jenin battalion.”

How the Trump administration affects dynamics

To some right-wing Israelis, the advent of the Trump administration – along with success in degrading Hamas and Hezbollah – provides a unique opportunity to extend Israeli superiority in the region.

During his first term, Trump abandoned the long-held US stance that settlements are illegal; Biden restored it. Several of Trump’s nominees have suggested Israel has the right to annex the West Bank.

More than 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which was captured by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 war. Jewish settlements there are considered illegal under international law.

Elise Stefanik, who is slated to become the new US ambassador to the United Nations, said Tuesday she agreed with the view that Israel has “a biblical right” to annex the West Bank. Mike Huckabee, who is expected to become US ambassador to Israel, has said in the past that there is “no such thing as a Palestinian.”

On Monday, the day he took office, Trump rescinded sanctions imposed by the former Biden administration on far-right Israeli settler groups and individuals accused of being involved in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Anti-Palestinian violence by extremist settlers has become a near-daily occurrence in the West Bank. In 2024, the UN documented 1,420 incidents of settler violence resulting in casualties and/or property damage in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Some of those responsible were arrested, but the Israeli Defense Ministry last week decided to release Jewish settlers held under what’s known as administrative detention “in light of the expected release of terrorists to the territories of Judea and Samaria,” under the terms of the Gaza ceasefire deal.

Katz said the decision to release the settlers would “send a clear message of strengthening and encouraging settlement, which stands at the forefront of the struggle against Palestinian terror and growing security challenges.”

Correction: This story has been updated to correct Mike Huckabee’s previous comments about Palestinians.

Italy’s high court has upheld the remaining conviction against American Amanda Knox, who was jailed and later acquitted of the 2007 murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher.

Knox was convicted of slandering her former boss Patrick Lumumba by falsely accusing him of Kercher’s murder. Knox, 20 at the time, signed two statements prepared by police regarding her accusation against Lumumba. She later wrote a handwritten note questioning her false accusation.

Lumumba was arrested after Knox’s accusation and spent two weeks in jail until police released him due to lack of forensic evidence. He blames the arrest on his losing his club Le Chic, which closed shortly after.

In a long legal saga, Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of Kercher’s murder after her body was found at the student apartment she shared with Knox in Puglia. The two were acquitted, then reconvicted before being definitively acquitted in 2015.

However, the slander conviction remained. Knox petitioned the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in 2023 that her rights were violated during the 2007 interrogation that led to her false accusation against Lumumba.

In June 2024, a court in Florence upheld the slander conviction, which led to Thursday’s high court hearing.

Knox, who attended the June 2024 hearing but who did not attend Thursday’s high court session, posted a lengthy thread on X outlining her side of the story, including how the police “were never held accountable for the crimes they committed against me behind closed doors.”

She also wrote, “I’ll have more to say about this tomorrow, and on Friday, as I process what happens, whether I am finally acquitted or whether Italy will continue to blame me for the abuses of the Perugia police. Stay tuned.”

Lumumba, who did attend Thursday’s hearing, told reporters upon entering the court that Knox “never apologized to me.”

Speaking outside court after the verdict, Lumumba said he was “very satisfied” with the ruling, according to the news agency Reuters. “Amanda did wrong, this sentence must accompany her for the rest of her life. I had a good feeling about this since the afternoon. I hail Italian justice with great honor,” he said.

During the June hearing, Knox told the two-judge, six-jury panel that she was sorry she did not try to retract the accusation against Lumumba sooner, but insisted she was “a young person in an existential crisis” when she accused him. “I did not know who the assassin was,” she told the court.

Knox does not face any additional jail time.

The female Palestinian inmates were made to kneel in a line on a cold evening last Sunday on the grounds of Israel’s Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank.

“This is not a victory for you. We have destroyed and killed in Gaza, in Yemen, in Syria, in Iran. We killed (your) leadership,” one, Rula Hassanein, recalled hearing in a 90-second Israeli propaganda video they were forced to watch on a large screen ahead of their release.

The women were part of a group of 90 Palestinian prisoners released in a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel. Around nine hours earlier, Hamas had freed three Israeli hostages in Gaza after 15 months of captivity.

Hassanein remembers the video vividly. The prisoners, she said, were made to watch it on loop for hours as Palestinians gathered outside to receive them.

Israeli authorities charged her with incitement on social media, she said.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), court documents accused Hassanein of incitement over posts in 2022 and 2023, including reposts on X and Facebook “in which she commented on the Israel-Gaza war, that included her frustration over the suffering of Palestinians.”

In another post, Hassanein also “commented on events in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including the shooting of two Israelis in the northern town of Huwara in August 2023 and the killing of an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint in East Jerusalem in October 2022,” the CPJ said in May.

Hassanein described her time in prison as filled with abuse and humiliation. She said she was strip searched and verbally abused by Israeli guards, calling the treatment “torture.”

“They would hold us by the head, even slip off large parts of our headscarves, pushing us down to our knees and dragging us while we are bound at our hands and feet with heavy metal irons,” she said.

“Nonetheless, prisoners and detainees have the right to file a complaint that will be fully examined and addressed by official authorities,” it added.

Hamas is expected to release a total of 33 hostages from Gaza during the 42-day truce. Those released so far have not spoken publicly about their experience in captivity.

As of this month, Israel holds at least 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, according to the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society – though that number does not include an unknown number of Palestinians taken captive in Gaza. The figure of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel includes 3,376 people held under the controversial system of administrative detention, meaning they can remain in prison indefinitely with no public charges against them nor trial. It includes 95 children and 22 women.

A July report by the United Nations stated that detention conditions for Palestinians in Israeli custody “worsened dramatically” after October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, prompting an Israeli offensive on Gaza that has killed more than 47,000 and injured over 100,000 people, according to the health ministry there.

“The Israeli authorities further restricted access to food, water, sanitation and electricity, medical treatment, media and information, family visits and consultation with legal representatives,” the report said. “According to the OHCHR monitoring, there have been regular, at times daily, raids of prison cells, removal of personal items, and limited access to personal hygiene items, including menstrual hygiene.”

‘My daughter forgot what I looked like’

Hassanein described dire conditions in the Israeli prison, where inmates were given little food and were regularly subjected to physical and verbal abuse.

Access to menstrual pads was sometimes at the mercy of male prison guards, she said.

She recalled a woman from Gaza who wasn’t provided a menstrual pad. “We could see blood all over her clothes and she was mocked (by Israeli guards)… it was horrifying.”

Before her arrest, Hassanein had given birth to premature twins. One died hours after her caesarean section. The surviving child, Elia, appeared to have forgotten her mother while Hassanein was in prison.

A video of the mother and child’s reunion on Sunday went viral on social media.

Hassanein said she would often dream of her daughter in prison, but was dismayed when Elia didn’t recognize her initially. “Of course, my daughter forgot what I looked like,” she said.

“I saw her and I hugged her, but she was afraid,” she added. “I am trying, with my husband, to re-enter Elia’s life in a gradual manner, so as not to subject her to an emotional shock.”

A British teenager who murdered three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance event was jailed for at least 52 years on Thursday, for an atrocity prosecutors said was so violent it appeared he had tried to decapitate one of the victims.

On Monday, Axel Rudakubana, 18, admitted carrying out the killings last July in the northern English town of Southport, a crime which was followed by days of nationwide rioting.

Rudakubana will likely spend the rest of his life in jail for the murders of Bebe King, 6, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, 9, who were among 26 children attending the summer vacation event.

He also pleaded guilty to 10 charges of attempted murder, as well as to producing the deadly poison ricin and possessing an al Qaeda training manual.

Two of his victims suffered “horrific injuries which … are difficult to explain as anything other than sadistic in nature,” prosecutor Deanna Heer told Liverpool Crown Court.

Judge Julian Goose described Rudakubana’s actions as “evil,” saying: “I am sure that Rudakubana had a settled and determined intention to carry out these offenses and that, had he been able to, he would have killed each and every child, all 26 of them, as well as any adults who got in his way.”

The judge sentenced Rudakubana in his absence after he refused to return to court, having twice been removed for interrupting the hearing.

Goose said he was not allowed by law to impose a life sentence without the possibility of parole as Rudakubana was 17 at the time of his crimes, but added: “It is likely that he will never be released and that he will be in custody for all his life.”

This is a breaking news story. More details to follow.

A Chinese man who carried out a knife attack in eastern China last June that wounded a Japanese woman and her child and killed a bus attendant trying to protect them has been sentenced to death, according to a Japanese official.

A court in the Chinese city of Suzhou ruled that the 52-year-old unemployed man, surnamed Zhou, stabbed the trio after he became indebted and lost interest in living, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said on Thursday.

Details of the ruling were not immediately available through Chinese official announcements or local news reports, but Hayashi said Japan’s Consul General to Shanghai attended the sentencing.

“The (Japanese) government considers the killing and wounding of three people, including a completely innocent child, to be unforgivable, and we take the verdict with the utmost seriousness,” Hayashi said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning stopped short of confirming the sentencing, saying only that “Chinese judicial authorities will handle (the case) in accordance with the law” at a daily press conference on Thursday.

The stabbing attack was the first of two on Japanese nationals last year that raised concerns about anti-Japanese sentiment in China and prompted Tokyo to demand Beijing ensure its citizens’ safety.

Knife attacks are not uncommon in China, where guns are tightly controlled.

The attacks relating to Japanese citizens have also occurred amid a surge of sudden episodes of violence targeting random members of the public in China, including at or near hospitals and schools.

The attack took place on June 24 when the Japanese mother was picking up her child at a bus stop near a Japanese school, Japanese officials previously said.

The mother and child suffered non-life-threatening injuries during the attack. But a Chinese bus attendant who tried to stop the attacker later died of her wounds.

On Thursday, Hayashi repeated calls for the Chinese government to protect Japanese nationals in China. The Suzhou court ruling stopped short of making any reference to Japan, he noted.

Nationalism, xenophobia and anti-Japanese sentiment have been on the rise in the country, often fanned by state media and manifested in discussions on China’s strictly censored social media platforms.

The sentiment is rooted in bitter memories of Japan’s invasion and brutal occupation in the 1930s and 1940s and fueled by present-day territorial disputes.

In September last year, a 10-year-old Japanese schoolboy was killed in a second knife attack near another Japanese school in the southern city of Shenzhen. The trial in that case was due to begin on Friday, Japanese broadcaster NHK reported.

The second attack took place on the anniversary of the “918” incident in 1931, when Japanese soldiers blew up a Japanese-owned railway in northeast China and blamed Chinese forces for the attack as a pretext to invade.

The two attacks raised alarm among Japanese living in China and prompted then Japanese Prime Minster Fumio Kishida to demand “such an incident must never be repeated.”

But China’s foreign ministry described the attacks as “isolated incidents,” and said it had taken steps to ensure foreign nationals’ safety in the country.

“China will continue to take measures to protect the safety of foreign citizens in China,” Mao said on Thursday.

Donald Trump’s second term in office is getting off to a good start for China.

The new US president has so far refrained from acting on his threat to slap hefty tariffs on China, told business and political leaders at an economic forum in Davos that the two countries could have a “very good relationship” and reportedly expressed interest in visiting the Chinese capital in the months ahead.

Trump even gave a 75-day reprieve to Chinese-owned app TikTok and signaled he would look to dilute a law requiring the company divest its American business or be banned.

All this adds up to a strong signal that the returning president is willing to talk – and cut deals – with China. At least for now.

That is welcome news for Beijing, which has been bracing for a tumultuous period in US-China relations as Trump stacked his cabinet with China hawks and campaigned on levying high tariffs on all Chinese imports to the US.

“China realizes that’s there an opportunity to negotiate with Trump,” said political scholar Liu Dongshu of the City University of Hong Kong. “And a better US-China relationship is more important to China than to United States … so China is eager” to engage.

Stakes are high for Beijing, as a tit-for-tat trade war like the one during Trump’s last administration would hit China’s ailing export-reliant economy at a bad time. And Chinese leaders have been keen to seize on the opportunity to soften Trump’s hard line.

Xi called for a “new starting point” in US-China ties during a call with Trump days ahead of the inauguration and dispatched Vice President Han Zheng to the US capital to attend the swearing-in ceremony, the seniormost Chinese official ever to attend such an event.

Meanwhile at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang said China wants to “promote balanced trade,” not “surplus” with the world – striking a note that appeals directly to Trump’s chief complaint about the relationship between the two largest economies.

But China’s policymakers are also under few illusions about how quickly the tenor of US-China relationship could change – and are likely carefully calculating how to use the current breathing room to negotiate with the “art of the deal” president in the months ahead.

Containing the tariff threat?

Looming over this period of tone-setting is a “phase one” trade deal brokered during the last Trump administration.

The 2020 deal marked a truce in a tit-for-tat trade war that saw Trump heighten or impose tariffs on hundreds of billions of Chinese imports to the US – an act he claimed would level the playing field with China and that has largely stayed in place since.

Now that deal, which analysts say Beijing never fully implemented, is part of a larger probe of US-China economic and trade relations that Trump called for in an executive order on his first day in office.

The review will guide whether the White House imposes duties on China but is expected to take months. Also unclear is whether Trump will deepen export controls on sensitive technologies implemented by former President Joe Biden. That gives Beijing time to build a relationship with Trump, entertain him in Beijing or push for a pre-emptive deal to avert more severe economic penalties.

“China has realized Trump can be negotiated with, but he is a different, new Trump – what we committed to last time may not satisfy his new desires,” said Shanghai-based foreign affairs analyst Shen Dingli. This time, instead of being “coerced” into a tit-for-tat trade war by Trump, Beijing may do better to “smile, stay calm, and start talking with him,” Shen said.

Tariffs on 10% of Chinese imports into the US could still come as early as next month in retaliation for what Trump described as the role played by Chinese suppliers in America’s fentanyl drug crisis.

But those are a far cry from the 60% duties he campaigned on – and observers of China’s foreign policy say Beijing is likely looking at those threats as levers it could pull to mollify Trump.

For example, Chinese officials could move to implement more of the existing “phase one” deal and further open China’s huge market to foreign firms. They also could take additional actions to stem the export of precursor chemicals used to make the fentanyl.

In China’s domestic debates about foreign policy, many pundits too are advocating dialogue and cooperation on the economy rather than hard lines.

Jia Qingguo, a former dean of Peking University’s prestigious School of International Studies, expressed as much in a recent interview with state-linked financial publication Yicai.

“Rather than adopting a blanket veto of all US proposals,” China should “analyze which issues require opposition and which can be cooperated on based on our own interests,” he said.

If Trump does visit Beijing in the coming months, a trip sources close to the president have suggested he is eyeing, that will also give Beijing a key opportunity to woo the US leader.

‘Must not let our guard down’

But there are also very real limits to how much China can bend toward Trump’s demands – and skepticism within China about how possible it will be to cooperate with his administration. Xi pointed to those in his call with Trump a week ago.

“The important thing is to respect each other’s core interests,” the Chinese leader said, name-checking Taiwan, the self-ruling democracy Beijing claims and has vowed to take control of, as an issue the US needs to treat with “prudence.” On the other hand, there is a “broad space of cooperation” available on other areas, like economic ties, he intimated.

Within China there’s also debate about how the Chinese government should respond if the US president does begin to raise hefty tariffs against Chinese goods – and signs Beijing is preparing for a potential fight.

The country revamped its export control regulations late last year, sharpening its ability to restrict so-called dual-use goods. It’s also already limited the export of certain critical minerals and related technologies that countries rely on to fabricate products from military goods to semiconductors – another kind of leverage Beijing could use to fight tariffs.

Meanwhile, any deal-making between Beijing and Washington will not exist in a vacuum. Rather it will sit amid myriad tensions between the two sides on issues including China’s human rights record, a competition for technological and military dominance, and the balance of power in Asia.

China is unlikely to tamp down on behaviors enflaming those tensions – like its drive to modernize and expand its military and its ramped-up aggression pressing its territorial claims in the South China Sea and over Taiwan. And many US lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, unlike Trump, have given no sign they are willing to work with the country they see as the principal threat to America’s sole superpower status.

On Thursday, for example, lawmakers introduced a bipartisan bill that would revoke China’s preferential trade status with the United States, phase in steep tariffs and end a duty exemption for low-value Chinese imports.

Chinese leaders, too, need to ensure that they look strong in their dealings with the US, both for their domestic audience and countries across the Global South, where Beijing aims to project leadership.

So even as Chinese officials are welcoming overtures from a less combative Trump in week one of his presidency, there’s skepticism within China that those warmer-than-expected signals will last.

“This does not mean that the China-US relationship is any easier; it’s just that the US approach has changed,” Jin Canrong, deputy director of the China-US Research Center at Renmin University in Beijing, said in a video posted on his account on the social media platform Weibo. “We must not let our guard down … the US still views China as a strategic rival.”

The United Kingdom and Ireland are bracing for what could be one of the most severe storms seen in years, with authorities shutting schools and warning residents to stay in.

Storm Éowyn, an extratropical “bomb” cyclone that has formed in the North Atlantic and intensified rapidly, is expected to bring gusty winds, heavy rain and some snow to the region.

Met Éireann, the Irish Meteorological Service, has issued red warnings, its highest alert level, for wind for much of the country beginning early Friday, saying that wind gusts could exceed 80 miles per hour.

The UK’s Meteorological Office, or Met Office, has also placed parts of Northern Ireland under red wind warnings for early Friday for the first time since 2011.

“We reserve the issuing of red warnings for the most severe weather which represents a likely danger to life and severe disruption, and that is the case with Storm Éowyn,” the Met Office’s Chief Meteorologist Paul Gundersen said:

Keith Leonard, the chair of Ireland’s National Emergency Coordination Group, said in a statement that “Storm Éowyn is going to be a very dangerous and destructive weather event.”

All schools in both Ireland and Northern Ireland will be closed on Friday, according to the the Irish Department of Education and the Northern Irish Education Authority. Public transport will not be running in Ireland, according to the authorities.

Nicholas Leach, a postdoctoral weather and climate researcher at Oxford University, told the non-profit Science Media Centre that Éowyn was “likely to cause potentially severe damage,” which he said could include flying debris and fallen trees causing “extremely dangerous driving conditions.”

Along with the wind, Éowyn (pronounced “Ay-oh-win”) is expected to bring rain and snow to parts of the UK. A yellow snowfall warning is in place for parts of northern England and southern Scotland. Across Scotland’s central belt, snowfall could reach somewhere between six to ten inches, according to the Met Office.

Ambrogio Volonté, a senior research fellow at the University of Reading’s Department of Meteorology, said Storm Éowyn could “rival the ferocity” of Storm Eunice in 2022 and Storm Ciarán in 2023, “both of which sadly claimed lives and left behind severe damage.”

Éowyn is expected to move away from the UK on Saturday, although yellow wind warnings are in place in the north of the country for Saturday morning and early afternoon.

Leach said Éowyn is an extratropical “bomb” cyclone that has formed in the North Atlantic and “intensified extremely rapidly.”

He said bomb cyclones are typically the most impactful winter storms in Northern Europe.

While Leach said that the impacts of the climate crisis on extratropical cyclones remain uncertain, some studies suggest the strongest storms, like Éowyn is expected to be, may be getting stronger with climate change.

The Israeli government is seeking to keep military positions in southern Lebanon past a Sunday withdrawal deadline, set in a November ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah, the country’s ambassador to the US said on Thursday.

The Israeli military invaded southern Lebanon on October 1 – the culmination of a yearlong, low-level war with Hezbollah, which attacked Israeli-held territory on October 8, 2023, in solidarity with Hamas.

It is unclear whether the Trump administration has responded to the request or taken it to the Lebanese government. Former President Joe Biden’s envoy brokered the agreement between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group backed by Iran.

In a statement, a US Department of Defense official appeared to suggest that the timeline could be malleable.

Michael Herzog, Israel’s ambassador in Washington, told Israel’s Army Radio on Thursday that a 60-day deadline set out in a November ceasefire agreement “is not set in stone.”

“We are currently in discussions with the Trump administration in order to prolong the duration of time needed for the Lebanese army to deploy and fulfill its duties according to the agreement,” he said. “There is an understanding in the incoming administration about what our security needs are and what our position is, and I believe that we will reach an understanding in this issue as well.”

“The cessation of hostilities commitments that went into effect Nov. 27, 2024, state that IDF withdrawal from the Southern Litani area should be accomplished in 60 days,” the official said. “That timeline was set to try to generate speed of action and progress. And progress has been made.”

“The Lebanese Armed Forces have shown that they have the commitment, will, and capability to execute the arrangement,” the official added.

According to the November agreement, both Israeli and Hezbollah forces must withdraw from southern Lebanon by January 26, the end of that 60-day period.

An Israeli official who described Israel’s request to the US said Israel has requested a 30-day extension and has said it would re-assess the viability of withdrawing from southern Lebanon at the end of that extension. The official said all of the outposts Israel has asked to maintain are alongside the Israel-Lebanon border.

The Lebanese military and UN peacekeepers will be the only forces allowed in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah must pull its forces north of Lebanon’s Litani River – a frontier beyond which the militant group was not supposed to have advanced under a 2006 United Nations Security Council resolution.

“That is not yet the case,” Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer said of Hezbollah’s withdrawal and the Lebanese military’s deployment in a briefing Thursday. “There is movement, but it is not moving fast enough.”

In a statement on Thursday, Hezbollah said that were the Israeli military to remain in Lebanon past Sunday, it “would be considered a brazen breach of the agreement” that would require the Lebanese state “to deal with it by every means at its disposal afforded to it by international treaties in order to retrieve the land and snatch it from the clutches of occupation.”

US sees ‘a very positive path’

There has for some time been speculation in Israel that the government would seek to change the terms of its ceasefire with Hezbollah once Trump took office.

The exact situation in southern Lebanon is decidedly opaque. The Israeli military has spent these past months of the ceasefire feverishly destroying Hezbollah weapons and military infrastructure and leveling several Lebanese villages near the border. Hezbollah’s military posture is unclear.

The clearest picture has been painted by the US military, which together with the French government and the United Nations is monitoring the ceasefire.

US Major General Jasper Jeffers, who leads the American effort, said after a trip to southern Lebanon last week that Lebanese military “checkpoints and patrols operate effectively throughout south-west Lebanon.” He said that the belligerents were “on a very positive path to continue the withdrawal of the IDF as planned.”

Earlier this month, Lebanon’s parliament elected Joseph Aoun, supported by the US and formerly the military chief, as president. It ended more than two years of stalemate that had resulted in a presidential vacuum. The election was brought about by a robust Saudi effort to rally the necessary support for Aoun.

In his acceptance speech, viewed as a blueprint for a six-year tenure, Aoun vowed to monopolize weapons under the mandate of the state. It was an earth-shattering promise, marking a clear break with the decades-old unwritten policy to preserve Hezbollah’s militant wing which has been de facto been tasked with facing off against Israeli forces.

The American optimism over the ceasefire is not shared by many civilians from northern Israel, who have been slow to return to communities emptied by war. Residents of Kiryat Shmona are set to demonstrate against the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon on Sunday.

“Most communities are still empty,” Sarit Zehavi, who runs the Alma Research and Education Center, which specializes in security issues in northern Israel. “People want to come back.”

There is a widespread fear in northern Israel, she said, that military withdrawal will give Hezbollah carte blanche to deploy close to Israel’s border, under the nose of the Lebanese military.

“The Lebanese army is far from disarming Hezbollah,” she said. “We are very worried what will happen if the IDF fully withdraws and the IDF enforcement will stop, because we don’t see the Lebanese army doing anything.”

Lauren Izso, Eugenia Yosef, Charbel Mallo, Tamara Qiblawi and Max Saltman contributed to this report.