The direct Israeli-Lebanese talks held in Washington on April 14, brokered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, revealed the central difficulty of these negotiations: not a gap in objectives, but a language gap.
Both sides are talking because the problem is real: Hezbollah. Israel can name it directly. Lebanon cannot adopt a language that frames these talks as a partnership with Israel against Hezbollah without destroying its domestic legitimacy before they begin. The real challenge is not only what each side wants, but also defining the purpose of the negotiation without compromising it from the outset.
Hezbollah is simultaneously a Lebanese sovereignty problem and an Israeli security threat. There is a certain overlap of interests between Beirut and Jerusalem on the need to prevent Hezbollah from exercising independent military control over southern Lebanon. However, that overlap does not put the two sides on the same side.
Peace with Lebanon is an important goal. Normalization between the two countries would be a genuine regional achievement. Still, something plain must be said: none of it is achievable as long as Hezbollah continues to exist as an armed terrorist organization with its own military chain of command, its own escalation decisions, and a position that fundamentally negates Lebanon’s monopoly on force. Peace cannot exist with one government when another actor inside the country holds the right to decide on war and peace.
This is why the goal must be reframed. The objective is not demilitarization in the conventional sense; it is de-sovereignization: the systematic, gradual denial of the sovereign functions Hezbollah currently exercises from Lebanese soil. Those functions rest on four pillars.
The first is the right to decide on war and peace, independent of the Lebanese state. The second is physical control over southern Lebanon and the border zone. The third is dominance over financial flows, supply chains, and smuggling networks. The fourth is the capacity to substitute for the state itself through reconstruction, welfare, services, and political representation within the Shia community.
Only the gradual removal of these four functions can return southern Lebanon, and the authority over it, to the Lebanese state. Leave any one of them intact, and whatever is signed will be a tactical pause, not a settlement.
American backing is indispensable – not as a ceremonial presence or a diplomatic declaration, but as the operational backbone. Only a sustained American-led structure can reinforce Lebanon’s monopoly over decisions of war and peace; enable the formation and deployment of a dedicated Lebanese force in the south; apply real pressure, oversight, and sanctions on Hezbollah’s finance and logistics networks; and anchor a reconstruction effort that gradually returns the role of provider to the Lebanese state.
Without it, de-sovereignization is a concept.
With it, it becomes a workable plan.
Israel's concern is with Hezbollah, not Lebanon
Israel is not seeking to infringe Lebanese sovereignty, nor to design Lebanon’s political order in its place. Lebanese sovereignty belongs to Lebanon. Israel’s concern is narrower and more concrete: the security of its citizens, the integrity of its sovereign border, and the prevention of a situation in which Hezbollah exercises military sovereignty against Israel from Lebanese territory.
The more effectively southern Lebanon is brought under the authority of the Lebanese state, the less need there is for Israel to act on its own. The real issue, therefore, is not Lebanese sovereignty as such, but whether that sovereignty is exercised by the Lebanese state or displaced by Hezbollah.
That is why southern Lebanon must return to effective Lebanese state authority and not remain suspended between Israel and Hezbollah. Any transition from the current Israeli security posture can occur only in a gradual, conditional manner, under direct American presence and supervision, and with ongoing security coordination with Israel.
What is required is not a generic redeployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces, but a dedicated Lebanese force for the south: recruited from outside the south’s local population and outside the infrastructure Hezbollah has built there, trained, financed, and supervised within that American framework, and tasked with holding ground, protecting state institutions, controlling the border, and preventing Hezbollah’s return. Not an anti-Shia force, but a Lebanese state force that makes Lebanese sovereignty real in practice.
Israel will retain freedom of action against emerging threats to its citizens.
Hezbollah's supply routes must be permanently degraded, not temporarily disrupted. The damage done to the Syrian corridor is real, but it will not sustain itself. As long as a reliable artery for weapons, cash, and expertise remains open, any arrangement in the south stays reversible. This is not a secondary technical matter. It is one of the core sovereign functions that must be transferred.
Hezbollah’s social monopoly must also be broken. Its power is structural, not only military. It derives from dependency: reconstruction contracts, compensation payments, employment networks, services, and political address.
No security arrangement survives if the population remains exclusively reliant on Hezbollah for the basics of normal life. A state-led reconstruction mechanism, backed internationally, is not a humanitarian add-on. It is a strategic necessity.
Within this same framework, Nabih Berri must be seen clearly. He is not a driver of resolution, but rather part of the architecture that has allowed Hezbollah to consolidate its position for decades. He should not be treated as a guarantor, an implementation partner, or a resource channel. The process must advance without making him the node through which everything flows. If it does, it will not flow.
The measure of success must shift accordingly. Success is not a signed document or a joint statement. Success is a verifiable situation, within a few years, in which Hezbollah no longer functions as an operational sovereign south of the Litani; southern Lebanon has genuinely transferred to state authority; Hezbollah’s financial and logistical networks are measurably degraded; and the Shia community has real alternatives to dependence on a single armed organization.
That is also the condition for peace. Not because peace with Lebanon is distant, but because it is possible: quiet borders, commerce, tourism, civil ties, and a more stable Middle East.
For that to happen, however, southern Lebanon must return to the Lebanese state, and the decision on war and peace must rest with a government, not a militia. What opened on April 14 will become a real possibility for peace only if southern Lebanon returns to the Lebanese state.
The writer is vice president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. He served 27 years in the Israeli security establishment in command positions and is an expert in negotiation and Middle Eastern affairs.