Israel Green-Lights Direct Washington Talks With Lebanon on Hezbollah Disarmament

Israel and Lebanon have technically been at war since 1948; only once before did they try a formal pact—the U.S.–brokered May 17, 1983 agreement—scrapped within a year under Syrian and domestic pressure. Netanyahu’s sudden embrace of talks, after weeks of refusal, echoes Egypt’s 1977–79 overture that led to the Camp David treaty, yet also risks repeating the 1983 collapse if local militias or regional patrons veto it. Structurally, the move reflects two longer arcs: Israel’s post-Abraham-Accords strategy of sidelining Iran’s proxies through diplomacy plus coercion, and Washington’s century-long pattern (from the 1919 King-Crane Commission to today) of using leverage over oil transit—now the Strait of Hormuz blockade—to force negotiations it deems stabilising. Whether these talks succeed could determine if the Levant finally sheds a 78-year state of belligerency or slides into another cycle where cease-fire terms are disputed, external guarantors wobble, and non-state actors override state diplomats—a dynamic likely to reverberate through Middle-East power balances well past 2100, when water scarcity and demographic shifts may matter more than old front lines.