The US has successfully enabled Israel and Lebanon to come to an agreement. The “Trilateral Framework” that was agreed on June 26 is the culmination of several rounds of meetings between the US, Israel, and Lebanese representatives. This is an important achievement for the Trump administration.
It comes after the US also helped Israel get a ceasefire in Gaza and after the US also moved toward a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran. This means that the White House is now helping Israel de-escalate from conflicts on several borders.
The goal of the new framework is that “the two countries declare their ambition to end conflict between them, ensure the sovereignty and security of both countries, and establish peaceful neighborly relations between the two countries,” a statement from the US Department of State said on June 26.
The main theme of this agreement is that Lebanon will be under a kind of “trust, but verify” lens, where it will need to show it can rein in Hezbollah. Lebanon claimed last year that it had essentially complied with demands to disarm Hezbollah south of the Litani. However, that didn’t actually happen, leading to a new conflict in March.
What are the key points?
The fourteen-point plan includes a number of takeaways. “Israel and Lebanon affirm the right of each state to exist in peace, and their mutual desire to live in security as neighboring sovereign states.” The government agrees to “commit to a reciprocal, sequenced process, with clear conditions, whereby the LAF will restore effective sovereign authority over all Lebanese territory, pending the verified disarmament of non-state armed groups and dismantlement of associated infrastructure, enabling the IDF to progressively redeploy out of the Lebanese territory.”
Furthermore, Lebanon will commit to a “monopoly of arms and sovereign territorial control” in which the Lebanese army works to reassert control in various “pilot zones.” This will serve as a “mechanism for phased and verified redeployments of the IDF and the deployments of the LAF.
Two initial zones have been agreed to by the IDF and the LAF, and future pilot zones will also be agreed upon by mutual consent.” Lebanon is supposed to “rebuild the State’s monopoly on the use of force, achieve the complete and verified disarmament of all non-state armed groups, and ensure that such groups will have no military or security role and no armed capabilities anywhere in Lebanon.”
The goal is the disarmament and dismantlement of Hezbollah. Hezbollah isn’t named in the framework. “The Government of Lebanon rejects the claims of any state or non-state actor to use force on its behalf without its explicit authorization, and reiterates that any claim by any state or non-state actor to exercise a military or security role is illegal per the decisions of the Lebanese Government and contrary to Lebanese national interests,” one point says.
The countries are committed to a “secure, rebuilt Lebanon, under full Lebanese state sovereignty, in which no non-state armed group poses a threat to Israel, Lebanon, or citizens of either country.” Several of the points thus repeat the same concept.
The agreement is 'performance-based'
What is important is that this agreement is “performance-based.” In point 11 of the framework, it states that “Lebanon and the United States commit to preventing funds from flowing to any entity, organization, or individual affiliated with non-state armed groups and to take available legal measures to proscribe the activity of any such entity, organization, or individual. The Government of Lebanon explicitly commits to preventing reconstruction funds from flowing to non-state armed groups and connected entities.”
All of the points are important, and many provide a requirement, or at least a goal, for Lebanon to begin to take pragmatic steps against Hezbollah. This is important because Lebanon has often gotten away with hosting Hezbollah and then pretending that it has plausible deniability in all the attacks that Hezbollah carries out. Hezbollah stockpiled 150,000 rockets over the last few decades, but Lebanon pretends it has no responsibility.
If any other country did this to a neighboring country, like Mexico letting cartels stockpile 150,000 rockets to attack the US and then drive millions of Americans away from the border via attacks, we would all know what to call it. For too long, Lebanon enjoyed the privilege of not having to verify that it was doing anything. Instead, the UN was deployed as UNIFIL on the border with Israel, which was another way to enable Lebanon to get a pass in terms of responsibility.
Hezbollah also committed crimes in Syria over the last decade. Yet, Lebanon was not held responsible. This isn’t because countries can’t be held responsible for what armed groups they tacitly support do. Liberia and others have been accused of doing the same thing. Lebanon’s former president, Michel Aoun, was an ally of Hezbollah. Therefore, it’s not like the government has no connection to what the group does.
In 2000, Israel left Lebanon, so any pretense that Hezbollah had some excuse to exist ended. Hezbollah went on to murder former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. And then start the 2006 war. Did Lebanon charge one Hezbollah member with these crimes? No. Instead, some Lebanese politicians allied with Hezbollah to empower it. Now there is a “trust, but verify” kind of document serving as a roadmap to see whether Lebanon can do the right thing. If it can, then Israel will redeploy troops in Lebanon, and there might be peace.