Illustration: Lebanon has spent decades as a battlefield for foreign powers. Peace can allow it to rise again as a sovereign and prosperous nation.
The objective should extend beyond Israeli withdrawal and Hezbollah’s weapons. It should be to restore Lebanese sovereignty, rebuild the economy and transform peace into prosperity.
By The Editorial Board , Opinion
President Joseph Aoun’s landmark meeting with President Donald Trump today should not be limited to negotiating another ceasefire or managing another temporary period of calm. It should be about something far more ambitious: reinventing Lebanon.
Aoun arrives in Washington as Lebanon and Israel pursue rare direct negotiations under American mediation. The immediate priorities are clear: securing Israel’s complete withdrawal from southern Lebanon, strengthening the Lebanese Armed Forces and implementing the framework agreement announced on June 26.
But withdrawal alone will not rescue Lebanon. Nor will another agreement that postpones the fundamental questions of sovereignty, security and economic recovery.
Lebanon needs a comprehensive American commitment built around a straightforward bargain: Israel withdraws from Lebanese territory; the Lebanese Army receives the equipment, training and financial support required to control the entire country; Hezbollah relinquishes its independent military role; and Lebanon and Israel move gradually from hostility to normal relations.
For decades, the world has described repeated fighting as wars between Israel and Lebanon. That description is misleading.
The Lebanese state did not initiate these conflicts. During the 1970s and early 1980s, Lebanon became a battlefield between Israel and armed Palestinian organizations operating from Lebanese territory. Since Hezbollah’s emergence during the 1980s, Lebanon has increasingly served as the battlefield for Iran’s confrontation with Israel.
Hezbollah was created with crucial assistance from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Tehran has financed, armed and trained it ever since, transforming the organization into the most powerful instrument of Iranian influence in Lebanon.
The Lebanese people paid the price for wars they did not choose, fought over interests that were not theirs.
Before foreign militias, occupations and proxy wars overwhelmed the state, Lebanon was known as the Switzerland of the East. Beirut was a regional center of finance, education, tourism, publishing and entrepreneurship. Major international companies established their Middle East headquarters there. Lebanese engineers, bankers, doctors, educators and businesspeople helped build airports, roads, hospitals, banks and commercial institutions throughout the Arab world.
That Lebanon did not disappear because its people suddenly lost their talent. It disappeared because the state lost control of its territory and its decisions.
Peace can reverse that decline.
Lebanon and Israel possess highly educated, entrepreneurial populations with substantial experience in medicine, technology, finance and artificial intelligence. Peace could eventually produce investment, research partnerships and joint ventures that would benefit both countries. It could turn their border from a military front into a center of trade and economic opportunity.
Tourism could produce even more immediate benefits. Lebanon offers what few countries can match: Mediterranean beaches, mountain resorts, exceptional food and thousands of years of history—often within an hour’s drive.
No Lebanese community has more to gain from this transformation than the Shiite community, which has suffered the greatest human and economic losses from Hezbollah’s wars and Iran’s regional strategy.
South Lebanon should be known for Tyre’s Roman ruins and Phoenician heritage, Sidon’s ancient port and markets, Jezzine’s waterfalls and the beauty of its villages—not for destroyed homes, abandoned farms and military confrontation.
Baalbeck should be filled with visitors coming to see the magnificent temples of Bacchus and Jupiter—not treated as a military stronghold or subjected to repeated bombardment. The people of the Bekaa and the south deserve hotels, restaurants, farms, factories and thriving businesses—not bunkers, missiles and funerals.
This is why Aoun should ask Trump for more than diplomatic pressure on Israel. He should seek a long-term American partnership for rebuilding the Lebanese Army, reconstructing the south, restoring electricity, attracting investment and modernizing Lebanon’s infrastructure. American support should help make the Lebanese state more capable than any militia operating within it.
The elephant in the room remains Iran. Will Tehran permit Hezbollah and Lebanon’s Shiite community to leave the battlefield and embrace peace?
That is the wrong question.
Iran should not possess veto power over Lebanon’s future. The real question is whether Lebanon’s leaders—and especially its Shiite political, religious and civic leaders—are prepared to place their country ahead of Iran’s regional agenda.
Peace cannot simply be imposed from Washington. But Washington can help create the conditions under which peace becomes safer, more profitable and more credible than continued confrontation.
Aoun’s mission at the White House should therefore be larger than ending the latest war. He should present a vision for restoring the Lebanon that once helped modernize the Middle East—and building a new Lebanon capable of competing in the twenty-first century.
The Lebanese are tired of serving as soldiers and casualties in other nations’ wars. They want their country back.
Today’s meeting should begin the process of giving it back to them.
