Talks between Lebanon and Israel are beginning not in an atmosphere of trust, but in one of exhaustion. After another war, thousands dead, devastated towns in the south and a fragile cease-fire, the very act of direct dialogue with a longtime enemy has become a moral test for many Lebanese. For some, it is a necessary step to stop further bloodshed. For others, it is a dangerous concession that could turn into political normalization without justice.
Lebanon enters these contacts from a position of profound weakness. The state formally conducts negotiations, but it does not hold a full monopoly over decisions of war and peace. That is the central structural problem. As long as Hezbollah retains its own military logic, tied not only to Lebanon’s national agenda but also to Iran’s regional strategy, the government cannot convincingly guarantee restraint or the implementation of any long-term arrangement.
The latest war has only sharpened that contradiction. For many Shiites, who form Hezbollah’s core support base, talks with Israel feel like a betrayal of memory, resistance and national dignity. For many Sunnis, Christians and secular Lebanese, the problem looks different: their country has again been dragged into a war whose timing and logic were not decided by all citizens or by all state institutions.
According to Daycom’s earlier analysis, this internal fracture makes the current dialogue far more important than the technical terms of the cease-fire. Lebanon is not only negotiating with Israel. It is, in effect, negotiating with itself — over who has the right to define the national interest, who controls weapons, who speaks for the south and whether a unified state position is possible in a country where the memory of civil war has never fully receded into the past.
On paper, the cease-fire is meant to establish minimum rules: only Lebanon’s national security forces should carry weapons in the southern border area, while Israel retains the right to self-defense but is not supposed to carry out offensive operations against Lebanese targets. The problem is that each side is already reading those formulas differently. For Israel, self-defense remains a broad mandate for strikes. For Lebanon, continued demolitions and attacks look like the continuation of war under another name.
The killing of journalist Amal Khalil and the wounding of photojournalist Zeinab Faraj ahead of the new round of talks have deepened the mistrust. Such episodes do more than increase emotional pressure. They narrow the political space for compromise, because every new strike gives opponents of the talks an argument: dialogue with Israel is pointless while violence continues. At the same time, every new death gives supporters of dialogue their own argument: this is precisely why an exit must be found.
That is the tragedy of the present moment. Nearly all Lebanese communities understand that the country cannot endure an endless front in the south. But they disagree over the price at which the war should be stopped. Some fear normalization. Others fear renewed destruction. Some see negotiations as surrender. Others see them as the last available instrument of survival.
For President Joseph Aoun’s government, the central task is not only to extend the cease-fire, but to restore the state’s agency. That means pressing for an end to Israeli demolitions, withdrawal from seized areas and a clearer security mechanism in the south. But without internal consensus, any external agreement will remain fragile. Peace cannot rest on a diplomatic text alone when different forces inside the country understand the very nature of that peace in incompatible ways.
That is why the current talks are both an opportunity and a risk. They could open a path toward reduced violence, a stronger role for the Lebanese army and the gradual return of state authority in the south. But they could also deepen the internal divide if part of society sees them as hidden normalization or as an arrangement reached without fully accounting for loss, fear and political memory.
Lebanon has long lived inside a trap between external wars and internal incompletion. Its weakness lies not only in the military imbalance with Israel, but in the fact that the state still shares the right to force with a nonstate army. Until that question is resolved, every agreement will remain only a pause between crises.
And yet even such a pause matters now. For people clearing debris in Nabatiye, burying the dead in the south or arguing with friends in private chats about the very meaning of speaking to Israel, abstract diplomacy has become a matter of survival. Lebanon may not trust the talks. But it can no longer afford endless waiting in which war returns every time someone else decides to raise the stakes.
