Lebanon puts the 'Iranian nightmare' behind, opens to direct talks with Israel
With the appointment of a civilian, former ambassador Simon Karam, to the committee monitoring the November 2024 ceasefire, Beirut is breaking free from Tehran. Contacts between Lebanon and Israel continue, although unresolved issues remain, especially on the border. Hezbollah is critical of what it calls a "free gift" to the Jewish state, rejecting disarmament north of the Litani River. The rift between the Party of God and Nabih Berry's Shia Amal movement is widening.
Beirut (AsiaNews) – Lebanon is slowly re-emerging from the Iranian nightmare and its ideological indoctrination, which forbade any normalisation with the “Israeli enemy”.
Right after Pope Leo XIV’s historic and moving visit to the country, Lebanon embarked on direct, peaceful negotiations with Israel, in accordance with the Holy Father’s wishes, starting with the appointment of Simon Karam, a former Lebanese Ambassador to the US, to the committee tasked with monitoring the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah (signed on 27 November 2024).
According to a Lebanese episcopal source, exclusively reported by AsiaNews, the Holy Father’s visit to Lebanon already had, from the outset, a geopolitical dimension.
Perceived as moderate yet a partisan of Lebanese sovereignty, Simon Karam has the ideal profile to conduct “state-to-state” diplomacy without hastily engaging in formal normalisation with an “entity” still officially considered as an “enemy”.
For Lebanon, the prerequisites for normalisation are the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from occupied Lebanese territory, a cessation of hostilities, the return of Lebanese residents to their villages, the release of the Lebanese prisoners held by Israel, and the confirmation of the border demarcation between the two countries.
A prerequisite required by Israel, Karam’s appointment has radically changed the atmosphere of relations between Lebanon and Israel overnight. In Beirut, there is a sense of satisfaction that Karam’s selection has the added benefit of protecting Lebanese state institutions from potential Israeli reprisals and attacks.
National Security Council Deputy Director for Foreign Policy Uri Resnick is Simon Karam's Israeli counterpart in the monitoring committee.
In Israel's view, such civilian appointments should expand talks beyond purely military matters. The committee met for the first time in Naqoura, UNIFIL headquarters, and is scheduled to meet again on 19 December.
For Hezbollah, this is a “free gift” to Israel
The talks have, in principle, the backing of the three key figures responsible for Lebanon’s relations with Israel, namely President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, and Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri, who is also head of the Amal Movement, Hezbollah’s main Shia ally.
In a statement, Hezbollah asserted that Lebanon had given Israel “a free gift” by appointing Mr Karam, which was interpreted in political circles as one of the first signs of a disagreement between Hezbollah’s leadership and Mr Berri regarding the process of ending the war.
It must also be said that Hezbollah remains in complete denial of the strategic error it made when it took on Israel militarily. This denial is compounded by blatant bad faith, widely condemned by the country’s political leaders.
Thus, in the eyes of Lebanese Forces lawmaker Elias Bou Assi, "Iran continues to use the Lebanese card, and to play with the fate of the Lebanese, the Shia community in particular, in its negotiations with Washington."
No Israeli territorial ambitions in Lebanon
For Lebanon, Mr Karam's mission rests on the premise that Israel has no territorial ambitions in Lebanon and that the conflict in South Lebanon is isolated, or at least contained.
Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu gave such an assurance last summer when, in a message on X, he explicitly denied any Israeli territorial claims against "neighbouring countries," which includes Lebanon.
In an interview, Netanyahu had indeed spoken of his “historic and spiritual mission” vis-à-vis the Land of Israel, which was interpreted by some Arab media outlets and governments as an expansionist aspiration.
Despite Israeli assurances, the fact remains that, on the ground, the situation is very tense. The presence of fortified Israeli bases on Lebanese territory and the ban on rebuilding in the area bordering Israel are seen as a form of permanent occupation like what Israel has in Syrian territory. Furthermore, Israeli belligerence knows no bounds.
For the US ambassador to Lebanon, Michel Issa, “Negotiating is one thing, and continuing to bomb Lebanon is another: in Israel’s eyes, one does not preclude the other.”
Hezbollah is well aware of the consequences of such duplicity, having lost some 350 of its fighters in drone strikes since hostilities ended in November 2024.
Humanitarian access
However, a former army officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, believes Simon Karam could argue that time is needed to reinforce the Lebanese army with personnel and equipment is essential, an issue that France and Saudi Arabia must address immediately.
He could also present Israel with the prospect of “unnecessary human losses" among Israelis from suicide attacks or other high-profile action by a Hezbollah if the latter is pushed underground again, especially since it benefits from the complicity of certain groups.
Furthermore, this expert points out that, for Lebanon, the return of the population of South Lebanon to their destroyed villages is an "absolute red line," regardless of the merits of the "economic zone" that Israel is dangling before a people forced into exile.
“Southern villagers,” he explains, “are viscerally attached to ‘their’ land, a concept entirely different from the more abstract and constitutional notion of territory.” For Bou Assi, cited above, “the very idea that the Lebanese would agree to trade their land for nanotechnology factories is a farce.”
The Lebanese negotiator, says the expert, will likely call for “humanitarian intervention” closely supervised by the Lebanese army and an international force that replaces UNIFIL, whose mission ends at the end of 2026, as well as for phased reconstruction, without any involvement of actors close to Hezbollah, so as to rule out any future military “surprises”, pending the complete disarmament of the pro-Iranian militia and Hezbollah’s purely political integration into Lebanon’s power system.
The goal is a return to the 1949 armistice agreement and the exact borders set at the time, based on the 1923 Paulet-Newcomb agreement between Palestine and Lebanon. This non-belligerence agreement would be a prerequisite for genuine peace, pending support from the Arab League and the backers of the Abraham Accords, brokered by Jared Kushner and his Saudi partners.
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21/10/2016 17:38
