ISRAEL is set to approve a ceasefire deal with the Lebanese-based terror group Hezbollah.

The coming halt to fighting follows Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in September as it carried out its ruthless response to the horror October 7 terror attack.

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PM Benjamin Netanyahu has announced he will bring the ceasefire before his cabinet with his recommendation.

Speaking to his country tonight, Netanyahu vowed to return the hostages who remain in Gaza and touted the resilience of northern Israelis who had to flee their home and Hezbollah’s rockets.

Natanyahu claimed to have “severed the head of the snake” by killing leader Hassan Nasrallah and pushed his Lebanese enemy “decades back.”

“We attacked strategic targets throughout Lebanon… Lebanon is not the same. All of this would have sounded like science fiction, but it is not.”

But Netanyahu vowed to strike Hezbollah again if it were to break the terms of the deal by launching rockets at Israel or building infrastructure near the border.

“If Hezbollah tries to attack us, if it arms itself and rebuilds infrastructure near the border, we will attack.”

He added that there were three reasons to pursue a ceasefire: to focus on Iran, replenish depleted arms supplies and give the army a rest, and finally to isolate Hamas.

It is not clear when the ceasefire deal would go into effect and what the details of it exactly are.

A ceasefire with Hezbollah is not a ceasefire with Hamas – who carried out the October 7 terror attack and who Israel is still fighting in Gaza.

Both of those groups are proxies of Israel’s arch-enemy Iran and have acted in concert.

US president Joe Biden is now also set to speak in the White House Rose Garden following the announcement.

Swathes of northern Israel have become ghost towns since Hezbollah began daily rocket barrages in support of its Hamas allies following the October 7 attacks last year.

Israel hit back in September with a withering show of force – killing the Iran-backed groups’s leader Hassan Nasrallah and all of his top lieutenants.

As truce talks intensified today, exchanges of cross-border fire between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah have also increased, with Israel reporting around 250 projectiles launched at its territory on Sunday alone.

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Strikes hit Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold shortly after the Israeli military called for people to evacuate.

Footage showed multiple plumes of smoke rising from the area, a day after the Lebanese health ministry said Israeli air strikes killed 31 people, mostly in southern Lebanon.

Throughout the war, Tel Aviv has decimated the terrorist forces with its troops, as well as Mossad’s powerful pager bomb plot earlier this year.

In September, the spy agency carried out mass sabotage against Hezbollah when it blew up hundreds of pagers carried by the terror group.

The blitz inside Lebanon sent a message to Iran and its proxies that Israel could attack hundreds of people at once.

And just days ago, an Israeli rocket blew up an entire tower block in Lebanon’s capital in a fireball and cloud of smoke.

It was Israel’s latest attack in its war against Hezbollah as they seek to destroy the terror group which has launched waves of attacks from across the border in Lebanon.

Tel Aviv had vowed to wipe out the group after 60,000 citizens were evacuated from northern Israel.

The Israeli Air Force (IDF) hits Hezbollah targets from the sky, whilst the IDF operates on the ground.

The offensive was originally planned to last around a fortnight but was extended as ground troops in the south and war jets extended their mission.

Earlier this month, Israeli Defence Forces said more than 120 Hezbollah targets throughout Lebanon were hit over 24 hours, including a command centre in the Nabatieh governorate.

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In Lebanon, more than 3,300 people have been reported killed and at least 14,000 wounded by Israeli attacks provoked by thousands of rockets fired into northern Israel.

More than a million Lebanese civilians have been forced to flee the fighting as the World Bank estimated that the war triggered by Hamas’s October 7 terror has cost £6.3 billion.

And this month, the IDF also killed Hezbollah’s chief spokesman in an airstrike in central Beirut.

Mohammed Afif al-Naboulsi was wiped out after a strike on the Arab socialist Baath party’s office, which also killed another three.

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Despite the peace in the north, there remains no end in sight to the war in the smashed wasteland of Gaza, southern Israel, where operations continue and Hamas continues to hold scores of hostages.

It comes as arrest warrants have been issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence chief, accusing them of war crimes.

In a bizarre move another warrant was issued against a former leader of Hamas – who is thought to have been assassinated in an Israeli airstrike earlier this year.

Former Hamas boss Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al Masri – also known as Mohammed Deif – is thought to have been killed in an airstrike on Gaza in July.

Israel has previously accused the International Criminal Court – which issued the warrants – of being anti-Semitic.

The warrants accuse each man of crimes against humanity after more than a year of brutal war in Gaza.

Hamas launched a horrific massacre in Israel on October 7 2023 – slaughtering some 1,200 people and kidnapping 250 more.

Israel then invaded the Gaza Strip with the aim of destroying Hamas and according to local health officials, some 44,000 people have died there since.

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