America Cannot Afford to Miss This Opening in Lebanon

Share this link on Facebook

Share this page on X (Twitter)

Share this link on LinkedIn

Share this page on Reddit

Email a link to this page

The unprecedented progress in Israel-Lebanon peace talks could end a decades-long conflict, if America can follow through on its promises of support.

President Donald Trump has an opportunity to do something no American president has managed in nearly half a century: end the war between Israel and Lebanon for good.

Washington has already seized the diplomatic initiative, by bringing the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors together in the White House to extend the temporary ceasefire. The high-level attention Washington is directing to Lebanon—including active efforts by the President of the United States to bring both Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese president Joseph Aoun to the White House—delivers a clear signal that Washington sees a win in Lebanon.

If this initiative is to succeed where the Biden administration’s 2024 effort failed and make this the last war between Israel and Lebanon, it must confront two uncomfortable truths that both sides, and Washington, have so far avoided.

First, Israel’s steadily expanding “security zone” in southern Lebanon is tearing the country apart. More than one in five Lebanese citizens has been displaced. Entire villages have been reduced to rubble. Of the more than 2,100 people killed in this war, 172 were children.

These are not Hezbollah’s villages; they are........

© The National Interest