The Israeli army’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon will last beyond the 60 days agreed in a ceasefire deal, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office says, claiming the agreement has not yet been fully enforced by Lebanon.
The statement on Friday came after the Israeli army attacked towns in the border region of southern Lebanon just two days before it is supposed to withdraw troops under the ceasefire with Hezbollah.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) reported on Friday that Israeli forces rampaged through the south, bulldozing and setting fire to homes in the town of Aitaroun, damaging a mosque in the town of Qantara and causing an explosion in Rab Thalathin.
The raids came amid Israeli media reports earlier on Friday that Netanyahu’s government was seeking ways of keeping soldiers in Lebanon beyond the deadline stipulated in the ceasefire.
Under the terms of the truce, the Lebanese army is to deploy alongside United Nations peacekeepers in the south as the Israeli army withdraws over a 60-day period.
Hezbollah is to pull back its forces north of the Litani River, about 30km (20 miles) from the border, and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure in the south.
“There have been positive movements where the Lebanese army and UNIFIL have taken the place of Hezbollah forces, as stipulated in the agreement,” Israeli government spokesmen David Mencer told reporters, referring to the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon.
“We’ve also made clear that these movements have not been fast enough and there is much more work to do,” he said, claiming that Israel wanted the agreement to continue.
Hezbollah said in a statement that any breach of the agreement would be unacceptable and called on sponsors of the deal to exert pressure to ensure the implementation of the “full [Israeli] withdrawal and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the last inch of Lebanese territory and the return of the people to their villages quickly”.
The deal, brokered by the United States and France in November, ended more than a year of fighting triggered by Israel’s war on Gaza.
The fighting peaked with a major Israeli offensive that killed thousands of people in Lebanon, displaced more than 1.2 million in the country and left Hezbollah severely weakened.
The Israeli Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported on Friday that Israel was asking US President Donald Trump’s new administration to extend the deadline, claiming the Lebanese army has deployed too slowly to the south and allowed Hezbollah to regroup.
National Unity party leader Benny Gantz, the former defence minister who quit the country’s war cabinet last year, was quoted in the report as saying the military should continue to “intensify operations against any violation by Hezbollah – minor or serious”.
A UN source told Al Jazeera that, while Israeli forces had withdrawn from large parts of the western and central areas of southern Lebanon, field data suggested they were preparing to retain points in the east.
The UN peacekeeping force has reported repeated Israeli violations of the terms of the ceasefire.
David Wood, International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for Lebanon, told Al Jazeera that Israel’s delay risks undermining the ceasefire agreement and said the Lebanese army does not have many options, especially while Israeli troops remain within its borders.
“But also I think there’s a symbolic aspect to this,” he said, speaking from Beirut.
“For as long as Israel remains inside Lebanese territory, it can potentially reinforce Hezbollah’s narrative that the Lebanese state alone, through the army, cannot resist Israeli occupation and therefore needs assistance from the continuation of Hezbollah’s military wing and its armed resistance.”
The Israeli withdrawal delay comes as Lebanese residents returned to their villages in the south only to find them devastated.
The Lebanese military asked residents of the coastal town of Naqoura not to return home for their own safety, given the trail of destruction left by departing Israeli forces.
“Naqoura has become a disaster zone of a town. … The bare necessities of life are absent here,” said Mayor Abbas Awada, who had returned to inspect the state of his town.
The mayor said Naqoura needed “at least three years” to rebuild and he was worried that a lack of funds, after years of economic crisis, would hamper reconstruction.
