In Lebanon, debate is widening over the usefulness of continuing direct negotiations with Israel. One political camp rejects them outright, while another calls for withdrawing from them, arguing that they are futile in light of continued Israeli attacks and incursions and the renewed targeting of Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, refuses to accept Israel’s terms and believes that Israel is using negotiations as diplomatic cover to continue military pressure and impose new facts on the ground. In contrast, another camp insists on the need to continue the talks, not because it trusts Israel’s intentions, but because negotiations constitute the only tool available to Lebanon in the face of international and Israeli pressure, and because withdrawing from them would give Israel an opportunity to portray itself as a party seeking a solution in contrast to a Lebanese state unwilling to engage in dialogue.
The dispute between the two camps conceals an embarrassing dilemma: what negotiating cards does the Lebanese state actually possess? The state finds itself in an exceptional negotiating position. It is not negotiating to end a war it fought, nor over weapons under its control, but rather over a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, at a time when the government considers the group’s security and military activities to be outside the bounds of legitimacy and insists that decisions of war and peace must rest exclusively with the state. As a result, the negotiations have become an attempt to address the consequences of a reality beyond the state’s control.
The paradox becomes even more complicated when the principal party is not actually participating in the negotiations, but instead rejects them and adheres to an entirely different approach. How can a state negotiate over security and political arrangements that it alone lacks the ability to guarantee? And how can any agreement succeed if one of the parties concerned does not recognize the process that produced it in the first place?
Nevertheless, withdrawing from the negotiations could be a political mistake no less serious than their limited results. Lebanon is not negotiating because it possesses exceptional leverage, but because it faces issues that cannot be addressed except through a negotiating process. First, there are the consequences of the war, including destruction, displacement, and economic losses, which require measures that would allow residents to return and reconstruction to begin. Second, there is the issue of the land border and disputed points, a matter that cannot be resolved through military force alone. There is also an urgent need for security and political arrangements following the cessation of hostilities.
Alongside these considerations, negotiations constitute one of the few remaining channels linking Lebanon to the United States and the Gulf states involved in efforts to consolidate stability. Withdrawing from them could be interpreted as the state abandoning its responsibilities or being unable to keep pace with ongoing diplomatic efforts. In this sense, Lebanon is not negotiating only with Israel; it is also negotiating over its place in the regional order taking shape after the decline of Iranian influence in the Levant, unless US-Iranian negotiations produce the opposite outcome.
Betting on the negotiations’ definitive failure may be premature. Understandings often begin as fragile arrangements before evolving into more stable realities. From this perspective, the idea of a “model zone,” despite the ambiguities surrounding it, may provide an opportunity to return residents to their areas and create a margin of stability that prevents a return to war. Its success, however, remains contingent on the Lebanese state’s ability to exercise effective authority there and on Israel’s willingness to respect its commitments, neither of which has yet been demonstrated. Nor can one rule out a potentially helpful factor: the possibility of political changes within Israel itself that could produce a more moderate government and one less inclined toward military options.
However, continuing negotiations should not become the state’s sole policy or a substitute for building its internal sources of strength. The real battle is not being fought only at the negotiating table, but also within state institutions. What is required, alongside any negotiating track, is the return of the state to areas untouched by the war and to those outside the party’s control before extending across all of Lebanon; strengthening the army and security forces; and dismantling networks of influence within official institutions that have enabled the existence of a parallel state within the state for decades.
Equally important is the launch of a new national approach, backed by genuine Arab and international support, toward Hezbollah’s social base with the aim of freeing it from the party’s control and domination. Such an approach should be based on political inclusion rather than isolation, and on partnership rather than confrontation. The restoration of the state’s role cannot be achieved through conflict with a major Lebanese constituency. Rather, it requires providing a political and institutional alternative that reconnects citizens with the state as the sole authority for protection, representation, and services.
The main problem may not lie in the negotiations themselves, but in the belief that they alone can produce a solution. They may address an immediate challenge, namely the ongoing war. They may reduce risks and provide diplomatic cover for the state. But they cannot remedy the structural imbalance that led Lebanon into war without a state decision and left it unable to impose peace afterward. Unless the state succeeds in restoring its effective monopoly over sovereignty, arms, and decision-making, Lebanon will not benefit from these negotiations, and they will remain merely an attempt to manage an open-ended crisis rather than bring it to an end.
