{"id":956164,"date":"2026-07-24T12:35:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T12:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/956164\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T12:35:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T12:35:17","slug":"can-israel-finally-make-a-peace-deal-with-lebanon-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/956164\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Israel finally make a peace deal with Lebanon work?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Historically, Lebanon is the land where the best-laid plans go to die.<\/p>\n

Israel has repeatedly convinced itself that it has finally found the formula for stability to its North. In the early years of the state, many believed Lebanon<\/a> \u2013 as the forward-looking \u201cSwitzerland of the Middle East\u201d \u2013 would become the first Arab state to make peace with Israel. In the 1980s, prime minister Menachem Begin believed president Bashir Gemayel could deliver that peace. Later, Israel concluded that a security zone in southern Lebanon would ensure lasting quiet.<\/p>\n

None of those assumptions survived contact with Lebanon\u2019s reality. Again and again, it has proven wrong those convinced they had finally found the formula for stability.<\/p>\n

Israelis, therefore, have good reason to greet with skepticism the launch this week of a pilot program under which the IDF withdraws from villages in southern Lebanon<\/a>, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) move in, clear out Hezbollah, and gradually reassert Beirut\u2019s sovereignty.<\/p>\n

History is not the only reason for caution. After all, this is the Middle East, where powerful regional and outside forces with conflicting interests lurk seemingly around every corner, intent on tripping up any progress.<\/p>\n

\"RepresentationsRepresentations of the Israeli and Lebanese flags at a memorial near the Israel-Lebanon border, as the town of Metula appears in the distance, June 27, 2026 (credit: REUTERS\/AMIR COHEN)‘Land for arms’<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, what happened this week was a tiny \u2013 but potentially significant \u2013 step forward.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Lebanese army troops deployed in the town of Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh in the Nabatieh region after the IDF withdrew from the area. It was the first of several pilot zones Israel is to evacuate<\/a> under a framework agreement reached with Lebanon under American auspices in late June.<\/p>\n

What makes that agreement potentially historic is that it goes well beyond another temporary ceasefire. A product of five rounds of the first direct political negotiations between Israel and Lebanon in more than 40 years, it establishes a permanent security framework by explicitly linking Israeli withdrawal to Hezbollah\u2019s disarmament.<\/p>\n

Call it land for arms.<\/p>\n

That linkage is what distinguishes this initiative from nearly every previous attempt to stabilize southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n

Earlier efforts focused primarily on changing Israel\u2019s behavior \u2013 persuading it to withdraw, relying on international peacekeepers, or assuming that time itself would somehow calm the border.<\/p>\n

This framework instead seeks to change Lebanon\u2019s behavior by making Israeli withdrawal contingent on Hezbollah\u2019s removal. Whether that formula succeeds remains to be seen, but it represents a fundamentally different framework.<\/p>\n

Under the agreement, Israel will withdraw from territory it captured to establish a buffer zone only after Hezbollah has been verifiably removed from those areas. In accepting that formula, the Lebanese government has effectively acknowledged for the first time that Hezbollah\u2019s weapons are the principal obstacle to a full Israeli withdrawal.<\/p>\n

Trump calls deal great agreement<\/strong><\/p>\n

That commitment was reinforced publicly on Tuesday when Lebanese President Joseph Aoun met US President Donald Trump<\/a> at the White House. Trump described the arrangement as \u201ca great agreement\u201d and said Israel was already \u201cin the process\u201d of redeploying its forces.<\/p>\n

Even more significant were Aoun\u2019s own remarks. Asked about criticism from Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who termed the agreement \u201csedition,\u201d Aoun dismissed suggestions that the agreement required parliamentary approval, saying it was a constitutional prerogative of the presidency and declaring simply, \u201cWe are committed to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another important innovation is that this time the United States \u2013 not the notoriously ineffective UNIFIL \u2013 is responsible for overseeing implementation and verification.<\/p>\n

The agreement is significant for another reason. It shifted the Israeli-Lebanese conflict from the border and southern Lebanon into a question of who controls the Lebanese state.<\/p>\n

Will Lebanon emerge as a normal, sovereign, Western-backed state exercising an exclusive monopoly over military force? Or will it remain subordinate to Hezbollah, whose independent arsenal and Iranian patronage have long eclipsed the authority of the state?<\/p>\n

The agreement, in effect, forces Lebanon to decide what kind of country it wants to become. And here there have been several encouraging developments that Israel would be wise to encourage.<\/p>\n

Hezbollah weakened<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unlike previous rounds of diplomacy, this initiative comes after Hezbollah has suffered major military, political, and financial setbacks. The organization has by no means disappeared, but it can no longer dictate Lebanon\u2019s national agenda as it did in the past.<\/p>\n

That weakening \u2013 as well as the weakening of Iran \u2013 helped create the political conditions that brought to power both a president and a prime minister who appear genuinely committed to restoring the state\u2019s sovereignty at Hezbollah\u2019s expense.<\/p>\n

Desire, however, is one thing. Ability is another.<\/p>\n

The central question now is not whether Beirut wants to disarm Hezbollah. It is whether it has the will, the ability \u2013 or both \u2013 to do so.<\/p>\n

It is precisely Israel\u2019s skepticism that Aoun can translate those intentions into reality that explains Jerusalem\u2019s caution.<\/p>\n

Aoun himself implicitly acknowledged the tremendous challenge during his White House meeting with Trump. He said he had asked the American president for only two things: continued political backing and support for the Lebanese Armed Forces, which he described as \u201cthe backbone of security and stability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without a strong Lebanese army, he warned, \u201ceverything will collapse,\u201d recalling that when the army disintegrated in 1975, militias filled the vacuum and southern Lebanon became a launching pad for Palestinian attacks against Israel.<\/p>\n

Trump responded with an unusually strong public endorsement. \u201cI fully trust the LAF. I fully trust the leadership of the LAF,\u201d he said. He also praised the agreement with Israel as \u201ca great step forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

That public vote of confidence matters. Unlike previous Lebanon initiatives, Washington has invested significant political capital in the current process and in trying to establish the LAF as the country\u2019s sole legitimate military authority, replacing Hezbollah rather than coexisting alongside it.<\/p>\n

But there is still a significant gap between Washington\u2019s confidence and the realities on the ground. The LAF may, as Aoun said alongside Trump, be the country\u2019s most respected national institution, but it is not currently equipped or financed to wage a sustained campaign against an organization as well entrenched and with as much firepower as Hezbollah.<\/p>\n

LAF Commander Gen. Rodolphe Haykal has warned that the army lacks the resources needed to implement such a mission, while years of economic collapse have left its soldiers poorly paid and the institution heavily dependent on foreign support. He warned that attempting to forcibly dismantle Hezbollah, a Shi\u2019a terror group, could place an enormous strain on the army itself \u2013 which is made up of Sunni, Christian and Shi\u2019a soldiers \u2013 and risk reopening Lebanon\u2019s internal sectarian fault lines.<\/p>\n

\"AA soldier adjusts a Lebanese flag on an armored vehicle in Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh village, southern Lebanon, as Lebanese soldiers deploy in the area, July 21, 2026 (credit: REUTERS\/ZOHRA BENSEMRA)Agreement places US in charge of verification<\/strong><\/p>\n

For Jerusalem, however, the strategic value of this framework lies not just in its text, but in its architecture. Unlike previous diplomatic attempts that collapsed under the weight of weak international coalitions unwilling to confront Hezbollah, this agreement intentionally positions the US \u2013 not France or UN-led peacekeepers \u2013 in charge of the verification mechanism.<\/p>\n

Israel has long viewed Paris with deep suspicion when it comes to Lebanon, seeing French policy as overly accommodating toward Hezbollah\u2019s political wing. This is to say nothing of the distrust engendered by what Jerusalem views as France\u2019s one-sided policies when it comes to the Palestinians.<\/p>\n

By contrast, this framework is Washington-centric and will utilize US Central Command (CENTCOM) to actively verify that Hezbollah has been removed from an area before Israel moves out. In Israel\u2019s eyes, American oversight means that a failure by the LAF to clear out a missile cache will actually carry diplomatic and financial consequences, rather than being buried in a routine UNIFIL complaint file.<\/p>\n

Yet even the best American verification mechanism cannot compensate for a Lebanese army that lacks the resources to carry out the mission. And this is where the plan hits a wall.<\/p>\n

While some envisioned Saudi Arabia stepping in to help bankroll the plan and fund the LAF, Riyadh\u2019s actual contribution has been confined to low-cost diplomatic theater. A decade after choking off a landmark $3 billion defense grant to Lebanon due to Hezbollah\u2019s dominance, the Saudis are now offering more diplomatic cover than hard cash.<\/p>\n

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) provided some economic help on June 11 by lifting a five-year trade ban, and even phoned Aoun on the eve of his White House trip to endorse the plan. But none of that substitutes for actually writing checks, and the Saudis have pointedly not opened up their wallets to pay LAF soldiers\u2019 salaries or buy new military hardware.<\/p>\n

That is why Israeli skepticism persists. The question is not whether Aoun wants to strengthen the Lebanese state. It is whether the army \u2013 the state\u2019s principal instrument of power \u2013 is strong enough and has enough money to carry out the task.<\/p>\n

There are, therefore, ample reasons to be skeptical. But there are also a few reasons to be cautiously optimistic: a substantially weakened Hezbollah and Iran, a Lebanese leadership publicly acknowledging that Hezbollah\u2019s weapons are the problem, an American administration deeply invested in the agreement\u2019s success, and an Israeli withdrawal explicitly conditioned on Hezbollah\u2019s removal.<\/p>\n

Whether those new realities will finally overcome Lebanon\u2019s long history of frustrating even the best-laid plans remains to be seen. But by pulling out of Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh on Tuesday, Israel signaled that despite all the reasons for doubt, it believes this framework is worth putting to the test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Historically, Lebanon is the land where the best-laid plans go to die. Israel has repeatedly convinced itself that…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":956165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[4784,99,233576,382527,62317,344751,13192,3097,50],"class_list":["post-956164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-idf","tag-israel","tag-israel-lebanon-border","tag-israel-lebanon-peace-deal","tag-joseph-aoun","tag-lebanese-armed-forces","tag-lebanon","tag-middle-east","tag-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116974985544101066","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=956164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/956165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=956164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=956164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=956164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}