Israel and Lebanon are sliding into war, but the US can still stop it

A battle for hearts and minds is being waged in the winding alleyways of Beirut. The Lebanese are anxiously going about their lives while keeping an eye on the intensifying border skirmishes between Israel and the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah. 

Plastered across the city walls and hanging from lampposts is the enigmatic image of Abu Obeida, Hamas’s masked spokesperson. Wrapped in a red kufiyah, the traditional Arab head garb, he is put forth as a symbol of defiance against Israel.

Meanwhile, a counter-campaign is trying to distance Lebanon from the devastating war to its south. Billboards with images of a child standing by a Christmas tree remind motorists that most Lebanese do not want war this holiday season, suggesting that Hezbollah must stop dragging the country into conflict in support of Hamas.

Israel is directly involved in this debate. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galant continue threatening to turn Beirut into another Gaza, should Hezbollah ignite a wider war. Several senior French envoys, including Foreign Minister Cathrine Colonna this week, visited the Lebanese capital to convey similar warnings. To avoid such a war, they stressed, Hezbollah must immediately withdraw its fighters from south Lebanon in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, the internationally brokered agreement that ended the Israel-Hezbollah war of 2006.  

These demands, as terrifying as they are, are divorced from the realities on the ground and unlikely to alter the still-unfolding border conflict. Hezbollah, the most powerful non-state military force in the world, has been entrenching itself in south Lebanon for decades. Meanwhile, Israel, thousands of UN peacekeepers, and a series of ineffectual Lebanese governments have done little to challenge it.

With an estimated force of about fifty thousand hardened fighters and an arsenal of over a hundred thousand missiles, Hezbollah will not cede its strategic foothold, its hardened bunkers, or its network of underground tunnels just because Israel demands it.

Hezbollah also does not seem to comprehend the extent to which Hamas’s killing and kidnapping of thousands of Israelis on October 7 shifted the political landscape inside Israel. It does not understand that, for Israelis, a return to the pre-Oct. 7 status quo on the border has become intolerable. It does not grasp that, with some seventy thousand internally displaced Israelis refusing to return to their communities for fear that Hezbollah might attack them, Israeli public opinion on this issue is now more hawkish than Israel’s right-leaning government.

The persistent pressure the Biden administration is putting on Israel not to launch a military campaign in Lebanon is insufficient. It is challenged by Israel’s domestic realities and the fact that Israel has already mobilized an estimated force of 120,000 troops to the north to deal with the threat. If Israel commences such a military operation, it could set the region on fire, forcing U.S. naval assets dispatched to the Eastern Mediterranean to intervene and conceivably drawing in Iran in the process.

To prevent such a destructive war, American diplomacy must promptly step up its efforts and lead the ongoing efforts, together with the French and the British, towards a negotiated outcome. 

U.S. mediation efforts to date remain quiet and relatively restrained, although it has much more leverage over both parties and a positive track record of negotiating border agreements between them. In 2022, with Hezbollah’s tacit approval, U.S. Special Presidential Coordinator Amos Hochstein successfully clinched a maritime border deal between Lebanon and Israel that ended long standing disputes.

Hochstein remains trusted in both Beirut and Jerusalem. He must quickly resume stalled efforts to delineate the land borders.  If he can deliver an agreement that resolves some of the remaining differences along the so-called Blue Line — the de facto border drawn by the UN after Israel ended its occupation of south Lebanon — both parties will have sufficient reason and the necessary political cover to de-escalate.

The general outlines of such a deal will see Israel withdraw from a number of minor outposts, the most significant of which is the Shebaa Farms, an uninhabited and inconsequential sliver of land held on to by Israel after its withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. At the time, Israel did not exit the area, citing competing claims by Lebanon and Syria.

In turn, Hezbollah would have to extract its most capable elite forces, estimated at 6,000, from southern Lebanon. It would also end all cross-border military operations. The Lebanese state will then commit to a long-term truce with Israel, a precursor to possibly normalizing relations after Saudi Arabia and other regional powers do. The U.S. and France will act as joint guarantors of this understanding, while UN forces in south Lebanon monitor Hezbollah’s withdrawal.

Such a proposal will have many detractors and is not without its challenges. Some in the U.S. and in Israel will argue that any territorial concessions will amount to further capitulation to Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors. Others will claim that Hezbollah will be emboldened by any Israeli withdrawal, and that it will again look for ways to assert itself on Israel’s border in the future.

Similarly, in Lebanon, Hezbollah may not be amenable to completely ceasing fire and withdrawing until the fighting in Gaza subsides. It would want to avoid being accused of abandoning Hamas and the Palestinians suffering in Gaza. It may also expect more, arguing for Western and Arab opposition to the appointment of a pro-Hezbollah president be lifted, thereby allowing the organization to consolidate its grip on the Lebanese state.

But faced with the stark alternative of a devastating war, such an American-led initiative would provide Israel and Lebanon with enough incentives to take the diplomatic off-ramp to avoid further death and destruction. Only then can Abu Obeida’s ominous image fade out in favor of a more peaceful future.

Firas Maksad is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington D.C. He is also an adjunct professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School for International Affairs.