Is Hochstein’s Lebanon-Israel peace mediation over?

Osama Al-Sharif

In October 2022, Amos Hochstein, whose official title is deputy assistant to the president, senior energy and investment adviser and US special presidential coordinator for global infrastructure and energy security, brokered a historic maritime boundary agreement between Lebanon and Israel. Negotiations took months and were almost derailed many times. Still, Amos, a dual US-Israeli citizen, managed to seal the deal, which many thought was impossible to achieve.
And last September, less than a month before Hamas launched its deadly attack on Israel’s southern settlements, he was again in Beirut, this time to undertake an even bigger task: the demarcation of a tricky and treacherous land border between Israel and Lebanon.
His mission never took off. Instead, President Joe Biden dispatched Hochstein to see if his experience and contacts could be put to use to de-escalate tensions along the Lebanese-Israeli border following Israel’s post-Oct. 7 military retaliation against the Gaza Strip.
In response to Israel’s war on Gaza, Hezbollah decided to break the lull on the shared border and fire rockets at Israeli towns and settlements in northern Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance in Gaza. Israel responded by shelling southern Lebanon and targeting Hezbollah assets within a 5-km strip of land under what are vaguely called the “rules of engagement.”
Biden was quick to send two US aircraft carriers to the Eastern Mediterranean in a stern message to Iran and its proxies not to open a new front. Hezbollah and Iran were defiant but also sent messages that they were not seeking a regional war. Still, Hezbollah and Israel continued to trade blows, resulting in the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israelis from northern Israel and the displacement of tens of thousands of Lebanese in southern Lebanon.
In a bid to contain the tensions between the two sides, Biden again dispatched Hochstein to Lebanon; this time, his mission was to reach a truce between Hezbollah and Israel.
Last week, he ended his third trip to Lebanon in as many months without a deal. Israel could not meet Hezbollah’s terms. According to various sources, the Lebanese group insisted on two conditions: no truce until Israel’s war on Gaza ends and Hezbollah will not withdraw its forces from the border areas to an agreed-upon point to allow displaced Israelis to return to their homes.
Over the past few months, the two sides have broken the rules of engagement. In January, an Israeli strike killed a prominent Hamas military leader in a southern district of Beirut, Hezbollah’s political hub, while the Lebanese militant group struck Safed in the Upper Galilee a month later. It did so again a few weeks later in retaliation for a rare Israeli raid on Baalbek, another Hezbollah stronghold in the Bekaa Valley.
The two sides have traded threats. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has warned Israel that the party’s fighters are ready for war and that its aim remains “to wipe Israel off the map.” Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned that Israel could turn Beirut into another Gaza. Hochstein’s meetings with top Lebanese officials could change little on the ground. Lebanon has a caretaker government with limited authority and very little influence over the main political broker, Hezbollah, and its allies in the government. And Hezbollah is beholden to Iran. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has visited Beirut numerous times since Oct. 7 and met with Nasrallah, apparently to coordinate steps and deliver Tehran’s instructions.
Hezbollah’s engagement with the Israelis is not to be underestimated. While Israel has not disclosed its casualties in the north, Hezbollah has been posting photos of “martyred” young fighters almost on a daily basis. The number is in the hundreds, including senior field commanders and, according to Israeli sources, the grandson of Nasrallah. Since Hochstein left Beirut, Hezbollah has increased its daily targeting of Israeli positions, firing hundreds of rockets and launching multiple drone attacks. This escalation coincided with the advent of the holy month of Ramadan and the collapse of ceasefire talks in Gaza. Israeli officials had set the beginning of Ramadan as a deadline for a possible ground offensive on Lebanon. Israeli analysts believe that only days separate us from a major Israeli military operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Washington and the Lebanese government want both sides to adhere to UN Security Council Resolution 1701. Israel claims that Hezbollah is violating the resolution, while the Lebanese group wants to make sure that the UN peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, does not hinder its ability to deploy its forces south of the Litani River. However, it also wants UNIFIL to remain in the region as a possible buffer.
Hochstein may no longer be able to get both sides to agree on a possible truce. For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war Cabinet, the situation in northern Israel is untenable. Even if the Gaza war comes to an end, Israel needs to neutralize future threats from Hezbollah. This will not happen through diplomacy and that is what the US special envoy has come to conclude. For Nasrallah and Iran, an inconclusive end to the current showdown is satisfactory. The Biden administration does not want a flare-up on the Lebanese-Israeli border, not during an election year and not when ties between Biden and Netanyahu are strained over the high number of Palestinian casualties in Gaza.
Iran is using its proxies to put pressure on the West without giving it an excuse to confront Tehran directly. This is what is happening in Yemen through the Houthis, as well as through Hezbollah in Lebanon and southern Syria. This has not happened without a cost. Israel has continued to target Iranian assets in Syria and the US retaliated as a result of the lethal strike that hit its base in Jordan in January, which was launched by an Iraqi pro-Iranian group. But it is a game that Tehran can still afford to play with patience.
Hochstein is unlikely to make a breakthrough or prevent a sudden Israeli decision to launch a major attack on Lebanon. Biden needs to make it clear to Netanyahu that the US opposes a war with Lebanon. Hezbollah is unlikely to risk losing credibility by delinking its war effort in solidarity with Gaza. And Netanyahu says he is ready to go into Rafah during Ramadan, regardless of Biden’s “red lines.” This is a recipe for a regional disaster and the US is the only party that has some leverage over the Israelis to wind down their war in Gaza and to take an Israel-Hezbollah war out of the equation.
No one wants to imagine what an Israeli war on Lebanon could lead to. The US knows that the solution to Lebanon’s complex problems lies in Tehran. Washington is trying to take over from the French, who have failed to tackle the Lebanese conundrum. But Hochstein will not be able to surmount that obstacle, not now. What the White House should focus on is ending the war on Gaza, sooner rather than later. It has to subdue Netanyahu, whose war has crossed all red lines and now endangers the entire region. However, that does not seem likely and the worst possible scenarios may soon come true.
Arab News