Lebanon and Israel Try Moving from Warfare to Conflict Resolution

AP Photo/Ariel Schalit

The Trump administration’s Deputy U.S. Special Envoy for the Middle East, Morgan Ortagus, announced last week that the U.S. will be “bringing together Lebanon and Israel for talks aimed at diplomatically resolving several outstanding issues between the two countries.” The talks will center on demarcating the Israel-Lebanon land border. They will also include working groups on a complete Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon and the release of Lebanese detainees held by Israel. The agreement to the talks followed a meeting of the five-party committee (U.S., France, Lebanon, and Israeli military representatives, and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon) overseeing the implementation of the November ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah.

The U.S. announcement did not include a specific date for talks to begin, and the format for the discussion was not detailed. Experts optimistic about the prospects for an Israel-Lebanon border deal argue that leaders of the two countries overcame significant internal dissent to reach a U.S.-brokered agreement demarcating their maritime border in 2022. As a confidence-building measure after Ortagus’ announcement, Israel released four detainees captured during the post-October 7, 2023, combat between Israel and Hezbollah, and Israel reportedly will release a fifth detainee this week. Another six Lebanese remain in Israeli captivity.

The complications in reaching a land border demarcation deal were immediately clear from Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s statement later in the week that Israel “will not give up” the five hills deemed “strategic” it occupied in south Lebanon in the course of its 2024 ground offensive against Hezbollah. He added: “Last week, we killed five Hezbollah members for violating the ceasefire agreement we seek to implement firmly.” The five strategic hills are locations aside from 13 disputed points along the informal Israel-Lebanon border, which themselves have been the source of conflict between Israel and Lebanon for decades. The 75-mile temporary border–the “Blue Line”–was set by the United Nations in 2000 to confirm the withdrawal of Israeli forces from south Lebanon after 22 years of military occupation, which began with the 1978 invasion. The most prominent disputed area is Shebaa Farms, along the Lebanon-Syria Golan Heights border. Lebanon claims the Shebaa Farms as its own territory, and Syria agrees with this position. In contrast, Israel asserts it is part of the Golan Heights-Syrian territory that it has occupied since 1967 and effectively annexed in 1981.

The complications in any compromise over the border were immediately apparent. The speaker of Lebanon’s parliament, Nabih Berri, who leads the moderate Shia-dominated Amal movement but who formally negotiates on behalf of Hezbollah, reacted sharply to Netanyahu’s insistence on retaining control of strategic heights inside Lebanon. Berri said Friday that Lebanon will “under no circumstances” accept giving up “any inch of its land.” Likely foreshadowing a violent response by Hezbollah to any Lebanese concessions, Berri added: “Lebanon will resort to all possible means to protect its sovereign rights and liberate the land from Israeli occupation.”

Roadblocks to a border deal aside, Israeli leaders, along with some outside experts, envisioned even more sweeping and positive implications for the upcoming talks. According to one Israeli political source, “the [border] discussions are part of a broad and comprehensive plan.” Other unnamed Israeli officials told journalists that Israel aims, as a result of the border talks, to establish full diplomatic relations with Lebanon,” and that “[t]he goal is to reach normalization [of relations between Israel and Lebanon].” Referring to the setbacks suffered by Hezbollah from Israel’s late 2024 offensive, another Israeli source said: “We and the Americans think that this is possible after the changes that have occurred in Lebanon.” The specific political changes the source references have been the recent selections of two anti-Hezbollah leaders, Joseph Aoun, and Nawaf Salam, as president and prime minister, respectively. Another source told Israel’s Channel 12: “The [Israeli] Prime Minister’s policy has already changed the Middle East, and we want to continue the momentum and reach normalization with Lebanon. Just as Lebanon has claims regarding the borders, so do we. We will discuss these matters.”

U.S. and Lebanese leaders immediately sought to counter the Israeli optimism that border talks would build on the normalization agreements in 2020 between Israel and several Arab states (Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Morocco, and Sudan) and transform the region. A U.S. official reportedly involved in negotiations between Israel and Lebanon told journalists broader Israel-Lebanon normalization is “not on the table.” One U.S. official obliquely criticized the Israeli commentary, saying: “the exaggerated reports regarding normalization between Lebanon and Israel could hinder [land] border [demarcation] before they even begin…Discussion of normalization is premature. Border security is the priority at the moment, in addition to emptying Lebanon of Hezbollah’s arms and purifying administrative posts of corrupt officials.”

Echoing the U.S. officials’ comments, Lebanese sources told the pro-Hezbollah Al-Mayadeen media network that ties with Israel will not be on the border negotiations agenda. One source explained the three working groups to be established “are not separate from Resolution 1701, and will not engage in direct negotiations between Lebanon and Israel.” UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the previous round of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 and was the basis for the late November Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire accord, requires south Lebanon to be free of any troops or weapons other than those of the Lebanese state.

The U.S. and Lebanese efforts to downplay the border talks reflect a recognition that Hezbollah, although weakened, might retain enough military strength and popular support to block any Israel-Lebanon normalization. Further, some experts argue that many Lebanese who do not support Hezbollah nonetheless oppose formal relations with Israel–sentiment hardened by Israeli tactics in the Gaza conflict as well as its past military efforts against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Lebanese government estimates that 1.2 million people were displaced during the Israeli airstrikes and ground operation late last year. On the other hand, some argue that Hezbollah has been sufficiently weakened that it cannot prevent a government decision to normalize, if there were a consensus within Lebanon to do so. Hilal Khashan, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut (AUB), argued that Hezbollah is in “a very vulnerable position” and will eventually accept that it has lost the war with Israel. He added: “They may oppose Lebanon’s normalizing ties with Israel, but they are not in position to veto it.”

Even if normalization is off the negotiating agenda, Lebanese leaders see the border talks as an opportunity to accomplish the longstanding objective of disarming Hezbollah and breaking what they see as Iran’s stranglehold over Lebanese politics. Lebanese President Aoun and his political allies, including many other Maronite Christians as well as Sunni Muslims, seek Hezbollah’s disarmament as a militia, the turning over of its Iran-supplied weaponry to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), and the transition of the group into a purely political party. Hezbollah’s opponents, as well as outside experts, agree that a border agreement with Israel will undermine Hezbollah’s rationale for maintaining an independent militia as a “resistance” to Israeli “occupation.” One expert, Mohanad Hage Ali, a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said: “If a deal on the border is done, Hezbollah’s alibi will be gone…It will pull the rug out from under them.” Disarmament of Hezbollah also matches Israel’s longstanding objective of removing the threat posed by the group to its northern border and as an instrument of Iranian regional strategy.

Disarmament of Hezbollah might, over the longer term, remove a key roadblock to Lebanon-Israel normalization. Still, building a Lebanese consensus for normalization will be difficult. Saudi Arabia has set conditions for normalizing with Israel as the establishment, or at least a clear roadmap for the establishment, of an independent Palestinian state. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for Lebanon to set normalization conditions any less strict than those stipulated by the Kingdom. The Israeli government’s opposition to a Palestinian state has hardened as a result of the October 7 Hamas attack, virtually ensuring that neither Saudi Arabia nor Lebanon will fulfill the Trump administration’s hopes of expanding its 2020 Abraham Accords any time in the near future.