Southern Lebanon should be a trade zone – not a buffer zone - opinion

Gone with it was the nerve center of Hezbollah’s Badr division: two decades of Iranian-funded digging, command rooms, living quarters, dozens of rockets and drones, and the firing positions over Metula and Kiryat Shmona.

A day later, the next round of Israel-Lebanon talks, set for Rome the following week, was pushed to October.

The two belong together. Since April’s truce, Israeli and Lebanese delegations have met seven times, in Washington and Rome, and signed a framework in June trading Israeli withdrawal for Hezbollah’s verified disarmament.

Hezbollah calls it “null and void.”

At the last round in Rome, in August, Ali al-Taher itself was a sticking point: Israel wanted the Lebanese army on the ridge; Beirut replied there were no Israeli troops there to replace. Now there is no fortress to argue about.

Ali al-Taher is a turning point in Hezbollah’s grip on the south. It is also a warning. Israel held the ridge from 1982 to 2000. Israel left. Hezbollah dug.

Resolution 1701, the November 2024 ceasefire, and April’s truce were meant to be the last word, and each has left Hezbollah rebuilding while an international mechanism monitored and advised; not enforced.

Twenty years and one Iranian budget later, the “day after” Israel’s last withdrawal had showers and a firing plan for the Galilee.

October’s talks will argue about maps. They will not answer the question that matters: What fills the ridge? It is time to think differently: turn southern Lebanon from a liability into an asset. Not a buffer zone, a trade zone.

The idea is simple. Israel, Lebanon, and the United States would designate a territory in southern Lebanon and recognize it, by treaty, as a free trade zone. The land would remain Lebanese. The venture would be jointly owned.

Washington would provide most of the investment; all three governments would hold golden shares, with vetoes over who joins, who operates, and how profits are split. A board with a rotating presidency would decide by consensus.

Every company would pay a “peace fee,” and a tithe of the profits would fund education promoting tolerance and deradicalization.

The companies would come from sectors that improve quality of life: agrotech, health tech, cleantech.

Skeptics will say economics has never beaten ideology in the Middle East. They are right. But that is not the claim.

The claim is that money can tighten the web of interests around calm, raise the price of losing it, and increase the incentives – Lebanese, Arab, and American – to finish dismantling Hezbollah.

In other words, the economy here is not a substitute for security. It is a disarmament tool.

Hezbollah’s terrorists earn $500 to $700 a month in a country whose minimum wage is $312 and where, according to the World Bank, 44% live in poverty.

Hezbollah is not only a militia. It is a payroll, a bank, and a welfare agency for much of Shi’ite Lebanon. Iran turned the Lebanese economy into a weapon. Wages, credit, and investment in a stable currency turn it into an instrument of stability.

None of this means outsourcing security. Washington invested some $3 billion in the Lebanese Armed Forces between 2006 and 2022 and got collaboration with Hezbollah, not confrontation.

Hence the non-negotiable principle: no territory changes hands until a trilateral mechanism of Israel, Lebanon, and the US confirms it is demilitarized. Israel’s freedom of action is preserved at every stage. And the more Hezbollah-free the ground, the more it is worth.

The obvious objection is the Jordanian case. The 1994 peace treaty produced the Qualifying Industrial Zones, and Jordan’s exports to the US, almost all of them from the zones, grew from $16 million in 1998 to over $1 billion by 2004.

They yielded exports, not stability. The peace stayed cold, the projects were bilateral and hostage to politics, and Jordanians never felt like partners in the profit; most jobs went to migrant workers. The economy was an annex to the agreement, not its engine.

This proposal fixes that. Multiple partners insure the venture against any one political crisis. Profit-sharing calms residents and governments.

Israel’s share would go, by treaty, to rebuilding a north emptied twice in three years – once by order, once on its own. And the economic arrangement sits at the core of the security arrangement, not beside it. A guarantee that is economic, not declarative.

Saudi Arabia leads the Sunni Arab world and guards Islam’s holiest sites; its participation would be normalization in miniature, before a single signature.

The president of Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, has declared, conditionally but publicly, his readiness to recognize Israel; last month Jakarta was reportedly shortlisted to help monitor Hezbollah’s disarmament.

Together, Mecca and Jakarta turn “Islam against Israel” into “Islam with Israel.”

And the Lebanese? They are readier than ever. In an Al Jadeed poll in May, 58% supported disarming Hezbollah and 34% opposed. Support for a peace agreement with Israel nearly doubled in less than a year, from 25% to 49%; for normalization, from 13% to 30%.

The Shi’ites remain overwhelmingly opposed: 88% against disarmament, 94% against normalization. That is not a reason to abandon the idea. It is the reason for it. The Shi’ites of Nabatiya are the people Hezbollah pays, and the people who most need another paycheck.

Israel has proven, at Ali al-Taher and elsewhere, that it can defend itself and destroy when necessary. No one in the region has yet proven they can build. Security is created by force. Stability is built by prosperity.

If the region’s next alliance is to have Israel at its center, it will grow from places like this, not from another ceasefire that isn’t one.