With Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun pushing for direct talks with Israel while Hezbollah rejects them, the country is once again at an impasse after a verbal spat between its leader and the Iran-backed movement.
Lebanon has officially been at war with Israel since 1948, making direct negotiations taboo until recently when two wars between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah exhausted the country.
A Lebanese official source told AFP yesterday that Aoun “is proceeding with the option of negotiations... there is no going back”. The president on April 17, the day a truce in the war went into force, said all Lebanese were “on the same boat” and that no one should commit the “crime” of sinking it.
The president on Monday stated that direct negotiations aimed at stopping the war, securing an Israeli withdrawal from the south, demarcating the border and reaching an end to the “state of hostility” with Israel.
In a jab at Hezbollah, which accused the government of “surrender”, Aoun rejected criticism of the talks saying that those who drew Lebanon into the conflict were the ones committing “treason”. “The president saying Hezbollah is committing treason is certainly unprecedented language,” Heiko Wimmen, researcher at the International Crisis Group told AFP.
US President Donald Trump said he hoped to host a “historic” meeting between Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. Beirut committed to disarming Hezbollah last year. Wimmen said that while Aoun and the government can negotiate with Israel, they “cannot make commitments in these negotiations that (they) can deliver”.
There are also concerns over the army’s lack of capabilities to disarm the group. The truce terms state that “with international support”, Lebanon “will take meaningful steps to prevent Hezbollah... from carrying out any attacks... against Israeli targets”, without specifying the type of support.
Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem warned on Monday that direct talks may lead to a “spiral of instability”, adding that his group will deal with them “as if they do not exist... and they do not concern us in the slightest”. The group also refuses to disarm, openly challenging the Lebanese government with officials and supporters leading a campaign against Aoun. Before a damaging 2024 war with Israel, Hezbollah was a dominant political power in Lebanon.
“Hezbollah has become more than ever isolated on the political scene,” researcher and Hezbollah expert Joseph Daher said.
Former Hezbollah lawmaker Nawaf Moussawi in a recent interview reminded Aoun of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated in 1981 over “treason” for signing a peace treaty with Israel.
With both sides entrenched in their positions, Nicholas Blanford, an analyst at the Atlantic Council, told AFP there are “two polar opposite visions of where the country needs to go”. “I don’t think either side really has the capability of imposing their vision on the other,” he added.
“Hezbollah is not as influential and politically strong as it was before, but the state is still fundamentally fairly weak.”