Is Israel about to make peace with Lebanon?

Six months ago, the notion of peace between Israel and Lebanon seemed remote, if not impossible.

At that point, Hezbollah and Israel had been exchanging fire for nearly a year. The border region between the two countries was ravaged — with a rising death toll and masses of civilians evacuated. By September’s end, Israeli troops would cross over, marking the third time Israel had invaded Lebanon since 1982.

And yet, Israeli and Lebanese negotiators met this week, in Lebanon, to accomplish a task that feels simultaneously benign and monumental: Agreeing on where, exactly, their border lies.

If the American- and French-mediated talks are successful, it could pave the way for a peace treaty that, in some ways, would be Israel’s most significant in nearly half a century. An Israeli official reportedly said, “The goal is to reach normalization.”

Here’s where things stand — and what could happen next.

Israel and Lebanon are close geographically, but have long been enemies.

At first glance, Israel and Lebanon, just to its north, share much in common: Both are small, ethnically diverse Levantine countries with histories stretching back to the Bible that were founded in the 1940s. The Lebanese capital of Beirut and Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, are only about 80 miles apart, both on the Mediterranean coast. For a brief period around World War II, train tracks ran between the two cities.

But over the past 75 years, the vast majority of Israelis to set foot in Lebanon have been wearing army uniforms. The countries do not have diplomatic relations and have repeatedly experienced war.

There have been three major Israel-Lebanon wars. 

Their most major conflict came in 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon, mounting a broad offensive against the Beirut-based Palestine Liberation Organization with the stated goal of stopping attacks on Israel’s border communities. Lebanon was in the midst of its own civil war, and Israel allied with Lebanese Christian militia forces, which carried out massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.

The PLO decamped to Tunisia, and Israel withdrew from much of Lebanon. But the Israeli military remained in south Lebanon, where it fought a new foe — the terror group Hezbollah, which took aim at both Israeli and American troops in the country. In the decades since, Hezbollah built up its own expansive militia and weapons stockpile, operating as a so-called “state-within-a-state” in southern Lebanon and winning seats in Lebanese parliament.

After a string of Israeli casualties  — including a 1997 helicopter crash that killed 73 soldiers, Israel unilaterally withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000.

Six years later, Israel and Hezbollah fought again after the terror group raided Israel and kidnapped soldiers. That month-long war is viewed in Israel as a debacle with high casualties and Hezbollah effectively remaining entrenched on the border. The soldiers’ bodies were returned two years later in a prisoner swap.

The border remained relatively quiet until Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, which Hezbollah joined shortly afterward, raining missiles on Israel that forced the wide evacuation of civilians from northern Israel. Israel responded with airstrikes and invaded Lebanon last fall, fighting a two-month ground conflict that killed much of Hezbollah’s leadership and left it enervated.

Now, Israel’s adversaries have been weakened. 

The Israeli invasion also weakened Hezbollah in other ways. For years, the terror group had helped prop up the Bashar Assad regime in Syria. Israel has also battered Iran, Hezbollah’s chief sponsor and a key Syrian ally. Without that help, Assad’s regime — which once occupied part of Lebanon — quickly collapsed last year.

Israel began withdrawing from Lebanon under a ceasefire in late November, and the border has been largely quiet since then. The ceasefire calls for the Lebanese army to take control of southern Lebanon, replacing Hezbollah. But Israel contends that that has not happened and says it needs to retain troops in Lebanon because Hezbollah is still operating in the area.

The election of Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in January — ending two years of deadlock in the political system, which is divided between the country’s Christians and Muslims — was seen as a further sign of Hezbollah’s weakness. The group’s preferred candidate dropped out of the election.

Aoun wants Israel to withdraw from his country. But his administration also marks an opportunity for building relations between the two longtime foes.

Talks are focusing on technical issues — and on Israel leaving Lebanese territory.

There have been bids at Israeli-Lebanese peace before. During the 1982 war, Israel made a failed attempt at a treaty that went nowhere. More concretely, in 2022, Israel and Lebanon negotiated a maritime border — which was seen as a step toward relations.

These talks could be even more significant. While Israel and Lebanon have always had a border — for a while it was called the “Good Fence” owing to the quiet that prevailed — there have also been disputes along the route.

This week, Israeli, French, U.S. and Lebanese negotiators met in Naqoura, Lebanon for talks that Morgan Ortagus, the American deputy presidential special envoy, said would focus on “diplomatically resolving several outstanding issues.” Among them:

• Releasing several Lebanese prisoners held by Israel
• Resolving the remaining border disputes
• Agreeing on an Israeli military withdrawal

Israel’s prime minister’s office announced that Israel was releasing the five prisoners “in coordination with the US and as a gesture to the new President of Lebanon.”

The road to peace has pitfalls and promise.

A land border is not a peace treaty, and establishing relations between two countries that have seen each other as enemies for more than 75 years is not simple.

If the remnants of Hezbollah resume attacks on Israel, or if Israel doesn’t withdraw from Lebanon, negotiations could easily be tanked. Hezbollah has previously cited disputed border areas to justify its attacks on Israel, and The New York Times quoted Beirut-based analyst Mohanad Hage Ali, who said, “If a deal on the border is done, Hezbollah’s alibi will be gone.”

But Israel as well as the United States have had their eyes set on accords with other countries in the region for a while. The focus thus far has been on a treaty with Saudi Arabia. But in some ways, a treaty with Lebanon is far more significant.

Israel signed normalization deals with four Arab countries in 2020, but none with which it had ever really fought a war. The same is true for Saudi Arabia: They don’t have official relations, but they’ve never fought a major conflict.

That is not the case with Lebanon. A peace treaty with Lebanon, if it were to hold, would be an actual peace — an end to decades of attacks, bombings and invasions.

It would also be Israel’s first treaty with a country on its border since the 1994 treaty with Jordan, which had also not fought Israel for years at that point. The last time Israel went, within the span of several years, from fighting a country to making peace with it happened with the Israel-Egypt treaty in 1979.

An Israeli-Lebanese deal would also mean that Israel would have relations with three of the four countries bordering it.

So will Israelis be able to board a train to sip coffee in Beirut? Not anytime soon. But this week’s talks may open the door.