A watershed moment in Israel-Lebanon ties

Old habits die hard, they say, and Israel’s modus operandi of using force, often excessive military force, when there are good enough reasons due to the complexity of a situation to hold their fire, has become irrepressible.
The current bombardment of targets in Lebanon is a case in point. It does not necessarily serve Israeli security and economic interests, given that it threatens to slam shut the small window of opportunity that had opened up for improved relations between the two countries, and could destabilize Israel’s nascent attempts to revive its northern neighbor’s political system with reduced Hezbollah influence.
For years before the Oct. 7 attacks, a violent confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah was widely regarded as a matter of when, not if, and the only question was how deadly it would be.
On reflection, given the way in which Israel has conducted its wars on Gaza and Lebanon, it is obvious that it was much better prepared to deal with its Lebanese nemesis Hezbollah, as an extension of the perceived existential threat from Tehran, than with the Hamas threat in Gaza.
By joining the war and forcing tens of thousands of Israelis out of their homes in the north of the country for nearly a year, Hezbollah provided Israeli authorities with the perfect excuse to inflict a massive retaliation that decimated the Iranian-backed movement, its militants, and much of its military infrastructure.
But it also resulted in the deaths and suffering of many civilians and caused further devastation to a country that has for so many years suffered immensely from internal, but externally imposed, conflicts.
Yet with the ceasefire deal and the weakening of Hezbollah’s military power, and consequently its political influence, new horizons have opened up for peaceful engagement in efforts to resolve border disputes and security arrangements, and even the prospect of normalization of relations at some point in the future.
The new leadership in Beirut is tasked with the momentous challenge of rebuilding the country, but first and foremost with bringing its diverse communities together and creating a coherent Lebanese identity that takes precedence over any other domestic or external images. It could be helped in this by Israeli authorities, were they to minimize the activities and physical presence of their military in their northern neighbor’s territory. This would also be in Israel’s best interest.
Certainly, there has been a promising start, in extremely difficult circumstances, by new President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam in their efforts to restore stability in Lebanon after the war. They have been very clear that they have no interest in a conflict with Israel, and that their country had been dragged into it by foreign interests.
But if peace is to prevail, both Hezbollah and Israel must adhere to the terms of the ceasefire agreement. For now, the weakening of Hezbollah and Iran limits their capacities to undermine the positive developments in Lebanon, including the ceasefire agreement.

The key objective of any agreement must be to break the vicious cycle of violence between Israel and Lebanon.

Yossi Mekelberg

However, Israel’s approach to Hezbollah, and therefore inevitably to Lebanon, is only complicating relations between the two countries and hampering progress toward improving them. It exposes the inability of Israeli authorities to translate tactical achievements on the battlefield into strategic gains.
Israel is constantly focused on threats rather than opportunities, and continues to search for further tactical objectives. It is obsessed with the constant use of military force, as evidenced by its habit of reacting to every single incident, large or small, which in turn emboldens Hezbollah.
After all, Hezbollah’s main raison d’etre for keeping a military force of some 50,000 combatants armed to the teeth has been its claim to be the sole source of resistance to the Israeli occupation of Lebanese land.
Israel could help to undermine Hezbollah’s posturing as the defender of Lebanon, and at the same time empower the country’s legitimate government and military, if it would agree to relinquish the territory it still holds inside Lebanon in violation of October’s ceasefire agreement, while also insisting that Hezbollah also does not violate the terms of the deal and remains north of the Litani River.
Moreover, if Israel would like to make good on its assertion that the current negotiations between the two countries involve discussions about normalized relations, something the Lebanese government flatly denies, it must also agree to negotiate, in good faith, historical claims on disputed areas that have been within Israel’s borders since the 1948 war, and discuss the possibility of agreeing on a permanent border.
Given the present political situation in Israel, this is hardly realistic, considering that some members of the governing coalition are opposed to a complete withdrawal even to the Blue Line, to which Israel withdrew in 2000, though it is not even the international border.
Any territorial “concession” to Lebanon would require, according to Israeli law, approval by a supermajority of 80 of the 120 Knesset members, or support through a national referendum. The current composition of the Knesset would neither allow the ceding of territory nor a referendum on the matter.
The aim of demarcating an agreed border is to bring an end to territorial claims by either side and, in doing so, remove any pretext for hostilities. Israel, not without justification, would like to ensure that Hezbollah and militant Palestinian elements mainly associated with Hamas adhere to UN Security Council Resolution 1701.
Reaffirmed in the recent ceasefire agreement, Resolution 1701, adopted by the Security Council in 2006 with the aim of ending the war that year between Israel and Hezbollah, created a buffer zone between Israel and Lebanon in which the presence of armed forces would be restricted to UN peacekeepers and the Lebanese army. It also prohibits incursions into Lebanese territory by Israeli ground troops or the Israeli air force.
In all of this, the peacekeeping operation along the border, and the international coordination mechanism tasked with overseeing the present ceasefire and future agreements, are therefore crucial.
It is through sheer luck and the hesitation shown by Hezbollah’s slain leader Hassan Nasrallah that he didn’t emulate, as his organization had planned for many years, an attack like the one by Hamas from Gaza, which probably would have had even worse consequences.
Lebanon has experienced the military might of Israel in the worst possible way a number of times, including during the First Lebanon War in 1982, the Second Lebanon War in 2006, and the most recent conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. The country is entitled to guarantees that this will not happen again.
The key objective of any agreement must be to break this vicious cycle of violence between the two countries and eventually normalize relations. Israel’s calmest borders are those it shares with Egypt and Jordan, and this was achieved through diplomatic negotiations, not military force.
Moreover, the 2022 maritime agreement between Israel and Lebanon demonstrated that both sides can, if they believe it is in their national interests, settle their differences in a mutually beneficial way.
For any long-term resolution of the historically fraught relations between Israel and Lebanon, their respective leaderships need to overcome certain domestic objections but, most of all, they must liberate themselves from the type of rigid thinking derived from being prisoners of history, ideology and, yes, old (and bad) habits.

• Yossi Mekelberg is a professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House X: @YMekelberg