Lebanon and Israel: negotiation gets stuck as Netanyahu promises to reinforce himself in the south

BeirutThe day after the first direct meeting between Lebanon and Israel in decades, held in Washington, the country remains caught between a still very fragile diplomatic opening and a war that shows no signs of slowing down. The meeting, sponsored by Marco Rubio, allowed for the establishment of a direct channel between the delegations, but it did not produce a ceasefire, a minimum agreement, or even a roadmap that would allow for discussion of a structured process. On the ground, the military sequence has continued its course with new Israeli bombings in southern Lebanon and drone attacks on the Beirut-Saida road, reinforcing the idea that, for now, diplomacy and war are advancing on parallel tracks.

the first direct meeting between Lebanon and Israel in decades, held in WashingtonThis Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised that his troops will continue to attack Hezbollah and that he has instructed the army to reinforce the security zone in the south of the country. In this zone, he said in a video statement, troops are advancing so much that they will soon take the city of Bint Jbeil, the second largest in southern Lebanon. Regarding negotiations, the Israeli leader remains inflexible: "In the talks with Lebanon there are two main objectives: the dismantling of Hezbollah and a lasting peace achieved through force." On Iran, Netanyahu warned that Israel is "prepared for any scenario" and maintains that they are aligned with the United States, which keeps them informed at all times.

For various specialists, the problem is not the will to negotiate, but the very form the blockade takes. Maha Yahya, of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, insists that the problem “lies not only in the distance between the Lebanese and Israeli positions, but in the absence of internal political conditions in Lebanon”. “The state does not act as a coherent bloc and any move affecting Hezbollah's role activates tensions that immediately limit room for maneuver,” she insists. Along the same lines, though from a different perspective, Bassam Lahoud, a professor at the Lebanese American University (LAU), points out that the main problem is the distance between the negotiation being attempted in Washington and what is happening on the ground. “Negotiations are being conducted as if the situation had stabilized, but the war continues to move, which means any progress can be quickly undone by a new escalation,” he summarizes.

Hezbollah's role and disarmament is the point where the process becomes most delicate, as it introduces a variable that is not only military but profoundly political and domestic, directly affecting the country's internal balance. In this regard, Yahya explains that Hezbollah's disarmament “cannot be understood as a technical or isolated measure, but as a long-term transformation of the Lebanese political system”, which explains why any attempt to accelerate it in the current context tends to generate immediate resistance.

An opportunity with little room

From the environment of President Joseph Aoun and political sectors opposed to Hezbollah, the start of talks in Washington is interpreted as an opportunity to try to curb the military escalation and open a path to stabilization, although no one in Beirut hides that the margin is extremely fragile. At the opposite extreme, Amal and Hezbollah reject the process as it is proposed and consider it unbalanced from its origin, understanding that it exposes the Lebanese state to concessions without equivalent guarantees, at a time when military pressure on the country continues to increase.

Druze leader Walid Joumblatt, from a more pragmatic stance, warns that what is decisive is not the format of the meetings in Washington, but the real capacity of the United States to translate them into concrete results, starting with a ceasefire and the implementation of the pending points of the 2024 agreement. At that time, Israel maintained positions in the south despite the truce. And, for his part, Maronite patriarch Bechara Boutros Rai has also defended the need to move towards a negotiated solution and stop the war, in a country where social, economic, and humanitarian wear and tear accumulates without pause.

Furthermore, a proposal attributed to Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer suggests reorganizing southern Lebanon into security strips: an area immediately adjacent to the border; another between the border and the Litani River, where military pressure on Hezbollah would be concentrated, and a third further north of the Litani under Lebanese state control. In this scheme, the Israeli withdrawal would be conditioned on progressive changes on the ground.