All In all, the region’s pretty small, and has much to gain from integration.
The wreckage since Oct. 7 can be viewed two ways. One is as an unmitigated tragedy. The other is as a horrendous prelude to something different — the darkness before a dawn. No one can promise that dawn — but things have rarely been darker. The situation between Israel and Lebanon encapsulates both.
In recent days the Iran-backed (and -armed, and -trained, and -funded, and g-uided) militia Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel out of solidarity with its beleguered masters. Hezbollah did this also for almost a year after Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre, and Israel eventually lost patience and the group was thrashed in the fall of 2024. Threashed but not eliminated. beaten but unbowed.
The new Lebanese government, under President Joseph Aoun, has tried to ban Hezbollah’s militia and promised to disarm it — but cannot. Plainly its interests are aligned with Israel’s — Hezbollah makes a mockery of Lebanon’s sovereignty. He has been braver than predecessors — but no less impotent. He needs help.
But if that help comes from Israel and its brutalist Netanyahu government, it could be ugly. There is talk of taking over a buffer zone in south Lebanon again (which would repeat past unhappy experiences and dislocate tens of thousands) and Israel might even (if it is very unwise) strike at Lebanese infrastructure.
Attempted to head all this off is France, Lebanon’s former colonial master. Emmanuel Macron has stepped in with a very ambitious plan, which would involve no less than Lebanese recognition of Israel (seems like recognizing the sun, but this counts for a lot in the Middle East). And there are indications that Lebanon may be close to accepting the framework. The plan envisions Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, deployment of the Lebanese army south of the Litani River, internationally monitored Hezbollah disarmament, and talks toward a formal non-aggression agreement.
To state what is obvious to people who understand the region – which exludes many of the knee-jerk uncompromising critics of Israel – everything depends on the Hezbollah militia disappearing and Iran ceasing to meddle with its neighbors. Anyone who thinks Hezbollah is “protecting” Lebanon is not just naive but probably quite stupid, in a very real and legally binding sense. Aoun does not.
I caution that it may require some boots on the ground, and these may need to belong to NATO. Someone should tell Trump the organization is not obsolete.
So what is the most important goal at hand? I’d say, simply because of scale, freeing the 90 million people of Iran somehow. It may need to be gradual, perhaps it cannot be accomplished in the war — but some day soon the Islamic Republic should be replaced with a legitimate government. But tied for number two is disarming Hezbollah. Tied with what? Separating Israelis and Palestinians.
So, yes, even though right now is a time of war, and despite the inclination of tough-talking pundits to see only that, I would argue that war and diplomacy need to work together, and indifference toward the latter is unhelpful. With that in mind, I’ll sketch out a vision of why peace between Israel and Lebanon would represent far more than the quieting of another front. If the French proposal succeeds – and is adopted and pushed by the US, NATO and the Arab League — it could become one of the most consequential diplomatic shifts in the Middle East in decades. It would not only end a formal state of war between neighbors that has persisted since 1948, but begin unwinding a geopolitical architecture built by Iran through armed proxies and sustained instability.
What could emerge instead is the reopening of one of the world’s most historically dynamic commercial and cultural corridors: the Levant. That would carry a deeper historical irony, for it was French (and British) imperial statecraft that did much to fracture this space in the first place. Here’s a survey of what’s at stakeand and might happen, if cooler heads prevail.
In the years after World War I, the Briton Mark Sykes and the Frenchman François Georges-Picot treated the region as a cartographic problem, carving it into zones of control with ruler and pencil.
The “states” that emerged cannot entirely be dismissed as fictions — but they were shaped in ways that often cut against the grain of geography, commerce, and communal life, dividing natural regions and trapping diverse populations inside brittle political arrangements.
So, while the eastern Mediterranean has for decades been defined primarily by conflict lines, geography tells a different story. The Levant is a naturally integrated economic zone: a short coastline, closely connected markets, and historic routes linking Europe via the Mediterranean coast to the Arab interior. Israel, a first-world economic with a hand in all camps, would be a natural hub for this. If a genuine Israeli-Lebanese accommodation were to emerge, it would not merely quiet a border. It could reconnect the economic logic of the entire region.
The Commercial Logic of Peace
The most immediate benefits would likely appear in energy and maritime commerce. Over the past fifteen years the eastern Mediterranean has quietly become an emerging natural gas basin. Israel has already developed a significant offshore energy industry, exporting gas from fields such as Leviathan and Tamar to Egypt and Jordan and exploring broader regional export routes.
Lebanon sits atop similar geological structures but has struggled to develop them. Political paralysis, maritime disputes, and the constant risk of conflict with Israel have discouraged international investors. Peace could unlock billions of dollars in exploration and infrastructure investment in Lebanese waters. Energy service industries, subsea engineering firms, logistics companies, and shipping operators would suddenly view the Levant Basin as a unified operating environment rather than a geopolitical minefield.
Ports would benefit immediately as well. Haifa has developed into one of the most efficient ports in the eastern Mediterranean, while Beirut — once the commercial heart of the Levant —still bears the scars of economic collapse (and the catastrophic 2020 port explosion, naturally caused by Hezbollah). Historically the two ports functioned within the same regional ecosystem. A peaceful frontier could allow Lebanon gradually to reintegrate into Mediterranean supply chains.
Cargo moving between Europe, Turkey, the Gulf, and the Red Sea might once again circulate through multiple Levantine ports rather than bypassing Lebanon entirely. In time, container traffic, ship repair industries, and logistics hubs could return to Beirut and Tripoli, providing badly needed employment and revenue.
Agriculture and small-scale commerce would also revive along the frontier. Northern Israel and southern Lebanon share a remarkably similar climate and agricultural profile — olives, citrus, grapes, and vegetables. Before 1948 local trade moved naturally across the border. In a more stable environment, modest cross-border markets could return, restoring livelihoods to communities that today exist largely in the shadow of military deployments.
But commerce is only part of the story. Tourism offers perhaps the most vivid glimpse of what an interconnected Levant might look like.
Israel already attracts millions of visitors annually drawn to religious sites, archaeology, and the Mediterranean coast. Lebanon historically drew tourists for its vibrant cultural life, cuisine, and mountain resorts. Peace would not erase decades of mistrust overnight, but it would make possible regional travel circuits that have been unimaginable for generations.
One can easily imagine the kind of itinerary travel companies might assemble if the region stabilized. The journey might begin in Lebanon. Visitors could arrive in Beirut — long celebrated as the “Paris of the Middle East”—sampling its famously inventive cuisine and lively cultural scene before heading to the ancient port of Byblos, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth. From there the route might turn inland to the vast Roman temples of Baalbek, among the most monumental ruins anywhere in the Mediterranean world, before climbing into Lebanon’s mountains, where cedar forests and ski slopes rise improbably close to the sea.
From Lebanon the traveler would move south across a peaceful frontier into Israel, descending into the lush hills of the Galilee — landscapes long associated with the ministry of Jesus and dotted with sites such as Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee. Continuing along the coast, one could visit the Baha’i Gardens in Haifa and Roman ruins in Caesaria enroute to Tel Aviv, a striking contrast to the region’s antiquity: a bustling Mediterranean city and one of the world’s leading high-tech hubs, where cafés, start-ups, and beaches coexist within a few square miles of astounding vibrancy. The journey would continue to Jerusalem, whose Old City compresses extraordinary layers of sacred history within its ancient walls — the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Al-Aqsa compound standing within minutes of each other.
From there travelers could cross into Jordan, where the desert landscapes open toward Petra, the breathtaking Nabataean city carved into red sandstone cliffs, and onward to the vast silence of Wadi Rum. In just a few hundred miles, such a route would traverse biblical landscapes, Roman ruins, medieval cities, and modern innovation —a compact civilizational corridor that once functioned as a single interconnected world and might, under the right conditions, begin to do so again.
Locals would move across the borders as well. Such encounters do not resolve conflicts, but they can soften the narratives that sustain them.
The idea of a connected Levant is not theoretical. In the early twentieth century railway networks linked the eastern Mediterranean with the Arab interior in ways that now seem almost unimaginable. The Hejaz Railway connected Damascus southward through what is now Jordan and into the Arabian Peninsula. Another branch ran west toward the Mediterranean.
The Haifa–Daraa railway connected the port of Haifa to Syria and onward into rail networks reaching Iraq. A traveler — or cargo shipment —could move from the inland markets of Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean coast with relative ease. For merchants in cities such as Baghdad or Damascus, Haifa served as a natural maritime outlet to Europe.
Much of that infrastructure collapsed during the twentieth century as wars, new borders, and political fragmentation transformed the Levant into a patchwork of isolated national economies. Railways were severed and trade routes redirected.
Yet the geography never changed.
If political conditions were to shift, modern infrastructure—highways, railways, energy pipelines, and digital logistics networks—could reconnect Mediterranean ports with inland markets stretching through Jordan and Iraq. Haifa and Beirut could now split the job; goods arriving by ship in either could move between them or toward Amman or Baghdad far more efficiently than today’s fragmented routes allow.
Several international initiatives already envision such corridors linking Mediterranean ports with the Gulf and beyond. They are mostly not yet public; soon they might be. In that sense the most transformative aspect of peace between Israel and Lebanon might not be what it ends, but what it reconnects.
Syria: The Uncertain Pivot
No discussion of a reconnected Levant can avoid Syria. Geographically Syria sits at the center of the region’s historical trade routes. Damascus served for centuries as a commercial hub linking Mediterranean ports with markets stretching toward Iraq and Arabia.
Today Syria’s leadership faces a devastated economy after more than a decade of war. Participation in regional trade networks, infrastructure corridors, and tourism flows could offer desperately needed economic relief. Some policymakers therefore believe the Syrian government might contemplate participating in a broader regional arrangement if the Levant begins moving toward economic integration.
Yet Syria remains one of the great uncertainties in any emerging Levantine settlement. Since the collapse of the Assad regime in December 2024, the country has been led by figures drawn from the former insurgency, most prominently Ahmed al-Sharaa. The new leadership in Damascus defies easy categorization. Sharaa himself emerged from jihadist networks but has since attempted to recast his movement as a pragmatic national government. His administration has taken steps aimed at diplomatic normalization and limited economic opening, even as violence — including massacres involving Druze and Alawite communities linked to the previous order —has cast a shadow over those efforts.
The jury is still very much out. Some regional actors believe Damascus may genuinely be seeking a repositioning of Syria within a more stable regional order. Others suspect a tactical effort to gain legitimacy and sanctions relief without fundamentally abandoning its ideological roots. What makes the moment noteworthy is that there have been quiet indications the new Syrian leadership might be willing to contemplate some form of accommodation with Israel — something once unimaginable under the Assad system.
If that possibility proves real, Syria could again become a central hinge in a reconnected Levant.
In a potentially significant and somewhat unexpected development, Syria has begun deploying thousands of troops to its border with Lebanon, according to officials cited in recent reporting. The move is reportedly aimed at tightening control over frontier areas long used for weapons smuggling and militia movement — routes that have historically supplied Hezbollah and other armed groups operating in Lebanon. Syrian authorities say the deployment is intended to stabilize the border and assert greater state control over territory that for years functioned as a conduit for regional proxy networks. If sustained, such a move could signal a willingness by Damascus to help finish off Hezbollah.
That’s critical, because none of these possibilities—commercial integration, tourism circuits, transportation corridors—are possible without addressing the central obstacle: Hezbollah.
Created in the early 1980s with the backing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hezbollah has evolved into the most powerful non-state military actor in the Middle East. Estimates suggest it commands between 40,000 and 50,000 fighters and maintains an arsenal exceeding 100,000 rockets and missiles. For decades Iran has invested billions of dollars in Hezbollah’s military capabilities, viewing the organization as a forward deterrent against Israel and as a pillar of Tehran’s regional influence. This reality has effectively frozen normal economic interaction between Lebanon and Israel. Investors do not finance ports, pipelines, or energy infrastructure in regions where war can erupt overnight.
Any meaningful peace framework therefore requires Lebanon to restore a monopoly on force within its own territory.
The reported diplomatic framework would require Hezbollah’s disarmament beginning south of the Litani River, with the Lebanese Armed Forces deploying in the area and international monitoring verifying compliance. Such arrangements would build upon United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, the agreement that ended the 2006 war but was never fully implemented.
For many Lebanese citizens this prospect would be a dream come true. Over the years Lebanese expatriates — particularly those living in places like Cairo and London — have often spoken openly to me about their frustration that their country’s sovereignty had been effectively hijacked by an armed movement more powerful than the state itself. Many have long wished for Lebanon to become a normal country governed by institutions rather than militias. If the current moment represents a turning point, it may be because conditions are emerging for the Lebanese state itself—through the Lebanese Armed Forces and with international support—to reassert that authority.
Iran and the Regional Equation
Hezbollah’s future cannot be separated from the broader question of Iran’s regional role. Even if the Iranian regime somehow survives the current war – badly beaten, without a doubt, but potentially unbowed in its resilient fanaticism – any negotiation with it, should involve four interconnected issues: its nuclear activities, its missile program, its network of proxy militias, and its domestic repression.
All four are key – but for the issue at hand, the militia question is central. Hezbollah’s existence as an armed force outside state control has been the single greatest obstacle to Lebanon’s sovereignty and economic recovery. The transformation of Hezbollah from militia to, say, merely a political movement could be the single most important step toward national recovery.
Israel’s Strategic Choice
A reconnected Levant also requires changes on the Israeli side.
Since the attacks of October 7, Israel has projected overwhelming military strength in response to a profound national trauma and the collapse of deterrence. That projection has had strategic effects. Gulf Arabs privately express admiration for Israel’s demonstration of military capability against Iranian proxies. Even for brutality. It is a region that requires ruthless displays of strength.
At the same time the war has inflicted upon Israel significant reputational damage internationally, narrowing Israel’s diplomatic maneuvering room precisely when regional diplomacy could open new possibilities. Military strength can restore deterrence. But regional integration requires something else: strategic diplomacy.
Israel will ultimately need leadership capable of translating military advantage into political arrangements that stabilize borders and encourage regional cooperation. Many observers believe that such a shift may depend on Israeli domestic politics and the emergence of a government prepared to pair deterrence with diplomatic vision.
Essentially, Netanyahu, a spent force and a cup that runneth over with the worst conceivable karma, must lose the coming Israeli election. Everything else will stem from that.
