A 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah appeared to take effect at midnight Thursday-Friday after being declared hours earlier by US President Donald Trump, who also announced that he was inviting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President for peace talks at the White House.

Both the Israel Defense Forces and Hezbollah continued to launch attacks on Thursday until right before the truce went into force, with rockets fired by the Iran-backed Lebanese terror group resulting in serious wounds to a 17-year-old girl and 25-year-old motorcyclist in Karmiel, while a Nahariya man in his 40s was moderately injured by another impact.

The IDF issued a statement minutes before midnight saying it struck over 380 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon in the past day, including Hezbollah operatives, command centers, and several rocket launchers used in attacks on Israel, while stressing it remained “on high alert and will act in accordance with the directives of the political echelon.”

Trump made the ceasefire announcement in a Truth Social post shortly after wrapping up a phone call with Netanyahu, during which he coaxed the Israeli premier to agree to the truce. The news caught Israel’s security cabinet off-guard, as no meeting was held to approve the decision beforehand.

The development was seen as a victory for the Lebanese government, which had agreed to hold direct talks with Israel earlier this week for the first time in decades, with the aim of securing such a ceasefire. Jerusalem had resisted a truce, convinced that further military action was needed to degrade Hezbollah, which has been firing at Israel.

Washington however became amenable to a diplomatic off-ramp as it appeared Israel’s military approach to curbing Hezbollah could only go so far, with previous declarations by Netanyahu that Israel inflicted generational damage upon the Shiite organization not seeming to ultimately pan out.

More critically, the US came to believe that a ceasefire in Lebanon would bolster its efforts to extend a nascent truce with Iran, a Middle Eastern diplomat familiar with the negotiations told The Times of Israel.

"I will be inviting the Prime Minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, and the President of Lebanon, Joseph Aoun, to the White House… Both sides want to see PEACE, and I believe that will happen, quickly!" – President Donald J. Trump ???????? https://t.co/zMspAjw3PD pic.twitter.com/KFipIMmFOD Advertisement if(typeof rgb_remove_toi_dfp_banner != "function" || !rgb_remove_toi_dfp_banner("#336x280_Middle_1")){ window.tude = window.tude || { cmd: [] }; tude.cmd.push(function() { if(navigator.userAgent.indexOf("rgbmedia-app") > -1){ tude.setDeviceType("mobile"); } tude.refreshAdsViaDivMappings([ { divId: '336x280_Middle_1', baseDivId: '336x280_Middle_1', } ]); }); } — The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 16, 2026

"I will be inviting the Prime Minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, and the President of Lebanon, Joseph Aoun, to the White House… Both sides want to see PEACE, and I believe that will happen, quickly!" – President Donald J. Trump ???????? https://t.co/zMspAjw3PD pic.twitter.com/KFipIMmFOD

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 16, 2026

Iran has asserted that Lebanon was supposed to be covered by the two-week ceasefire inked with the US on April 7 and that continued Israeli strikes on Hezbollah would risk upending the truce altogether.

The US and Israel maintained that Lebanon was not in fact included in the truce and have insisted on separating the two fronts in order to ensure that the government in Beirut has agency over developments in the country, rather than the Islamic Republic.

Accordingly, the US facilitated a historic meeting between Israeli and Lebanese envoys in Washington on Tuesday........

© The Times of Israel