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The Lebanese and Israeli governments are fully aligned on the goal of their diplomatic talks. When all is said and done, Hezbollah will be fully disarmed, Israel will have ended its security actions in Lebanon and fully withdrawn, and the border will be demarcated. The two countries will then have reached a bilateral peace agreement. The challenge is how Lebanon and Israel get there, and in what order.
Lebanon wants Israel to first completely stop its military campaign against Hezbollah, fully withdraw from Lebanese territory, and engage in border demarcation. Once these steps are concluded, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam will be ready to travel to the White House to sign a bilateral peace treaty with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Salam has explained how he interprets peace with Israel. For him, it would be a treaty without people-to-people normalization, a “cold peace” modeled on Egypt and Jordan’s peace treaties with Israel. Let the Lebanese people demonstrate to Salam and the Arab world whether they will engage with Israelis. My bet is on a very warm peace, with people-to-people normalization between Lebanese and Israelis, but I digress.
Israel wants a different sequence of steps to reach peace with Lebanon. Israeli officials and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio have repeatedly said that Jerusalem has no plans to control or annex any Lebanese territory. Instead, Israel will happily return all occupied territory and ratify a peace treaty with Lebanon. But first, Hezbollah must be verifiably disarmed. Then the sky is the limit. Israel would stop the war, withdraw from every meter of Lebanese land, and engage in whatever form of bilateral peace Lebanon and its people choose.
When Ambassador Simon Karam and his Lebanese delegation meet with Israeli negotiators in Washington on Thursday and Friday, the challenge will be how to reconcile the two different sequences for achieving the bilateral peace both nations seek.
In making their case, the Lebanese often cite their domestic political complications in an effort to persuade Israel to be generous once more by withdrawing before Hezbollah’s disarmament.
Israel, for its part, responds that the “withdraw first, disarm Hezbollah second” approach has been tried at least three times in the past quarter-century. After each withdrawal and Lebanese commitment to disarm the militia, the Iranian proxy has remained armed and has even expanded and rearmed.
In 2000, Israel withdrew unilaterally, and the UN certified that it was in compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 425. The rationale for the withdrawal was that, as a “resistance” movement, Hezbollah would have no raison d’être once Israel’s occupation ended. However, Hezbollah continued its cross-border attacks after Israel’s withdrawal, culminating in the 2006 war.
Israel stopped its military campaign and withdrew from Lebanese territory in return for Lebanon’s promise to enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and disarm Hezbollah. Beirut never did. Instead, Hezbollah expanded from a local militia into one rivaling a medium-sized European army. On October 8, 2023, it launched a war on the Jewish state, presumably “in support of Gaza.” Once again, Israel had to expend blood and treasure to counter the Hezbollah threat to its territory and its citizens.
On November 27, 2024, for the third time since 2000, Beirut committed to disarming Hezbollah if Israel stopped warring with the militia and withdrew its troops. Once again, Israel conceded Lebanese territory, save for five strategic hilltops that it promised to release once Lebanon completed disarmament of the militia. Again, Beirut never disarmed Hezbollah, which on March 2, 2026, went to war with Israel.
Later this week, the Lebanese government will promise Israel, yet again, to disarm Hezbollah if Israel ceases fire and withdraws first. Given its past experience, as recently as November 2024, Israel has no reason to believe that Beirut will deliver.
Perhaps a midway solution would be to do things simultaneously, with U.S. guarantees. Washington can announce the following: If Beirut verifiably disarms Hezbollah—with all the U.S. and international assistance it requires in this regard—the U.S. will guarantee Israel’s withdrawal to the Blue Line. Talks over border demarcation can then begin. From there, the path to signing a peace treaty becomes very short.
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