For the first time in living memory, Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors sat across from each other at the White House on Thursday in direct negotiations that lasted barely an hour but resulted in a three-week ceasefire extension brokered by President Donald Trump.
Trump announced the ceasefire extension on Truth Social moments after the meeting concluded. “The meeting went very well,” he wrote. “The United States is going to work with Lebanon in order to help it protect itself from Hezbollah.” With that statement, the president was identifying the common enemy that threatened Israel and the Lebanese government as the terrorist proxy of Iran. The talks revealed that the Israeli and Lebanese representatives in the room had concluded they were not there to fight each other but to unite against a common enemy.
Israel is clearly at war with Hezbollah. In the first 600 days of the war that began on October 7, 2023, the IDF recorded approximately 17,150 rocket and missile launches from Lebanon crossing into Israeli territory. Hezbollah has reportedly stockpiled as many as 150,000 missiles and rockets pointed at Israel. These were the actions of Iran’s forward army, operating from Lebanese soil, using the Lebanese people as cover and human shields.
Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter made this point with unusual directness in his opening remarks. “To put the emphasis repeatedly in our talks on Israeli withdrawal is to fall into the trap once again of putting the emphasis in the wrong place,” Leiter said. “If we continue down that path, we are doomed to failure. And failure, friends, is not an option.” He stated plainly that Israel wants peace with Lebanon and that both countries are “united in wanting to rid the country of this malign influence called Hezbollah.” This is not diplomatic boilerplate. It is a strategic realignment — one that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance confirmed the extension will operate under the same terms as the initial 10-day ceasefire agreed to on April 16. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the extension gives time to work toward a “permanent peace.” U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee compared Hezbollah to a “rough little kid living in the neighborhood who keeps throwing rocks at everybody’s window.” Trump made clear that the ceasefire does not prohibit Israel from acting in self-defense, saying Israel would strike “carefully” and “surgically” when threatened. He also stated that any deal with Iran must include an end to Tehran’s funding of Hezbollah. “Yes, that is a must,” Trump said when asked by reporters.
Neither Hezbollah nor Iran was present at the talks and has not commented on the ceasefire extension. The terrorist organization continues to hold enormous sway over approximately one-third of Lebanon’s Shiite population. Fighting has continued despite the truce, with Hezbollah carrying out operations in south Lebanon during the ceasefire itself, and Lebanese and Israeli forces struck a Hezbollah missile launcher moments after the ceasefire was announced. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam insisted his country cannot accept any agreement that does not include a full Israeli withdrawal from the buffer zone. Israel has been equally firm: the IDF’s three-to-six-mile buffer zone in southern Lebanon stays as long as Hezbollah poses a threat to Israeli communities in the north.
Francet was conspicuously absent from the Washington table. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot made a point of claiming Paris had been instrumental in bringing the parties to negotiate, saying that “without France’s intervention, there would likely not be a ceasefire in Lebanon today.” The Israelis disagreed strongly. Israeli Ambassador Leiter said earlier this month that Israel does not want France involved in the negotiations and would prefer to keep Paris “as far away as possible” from the process. France has a long record of coddling Hezbollah politically and pushing a false moral equivalence between Israel and the terrorist organization.
It should be noted that in the mid-20th century, Lebanon was one of the wealthiest and most prosperous countries in the Middle East. Its capital, Beirut, was once known as the Paris of the Middle East. It was the only state in the Middle East where Christianity was dominant, at one point making up over 60% of the population. Lebanese banks competed with Switzerland. Its universities attracted students from across the Arab world. Its beaches were crowded with tourists. Then the PLO arrived. Armed Palestinian Arab terrorists turned Beirut into a military base, and a 15-year civil war — not really a religious war but a demographic referendum conducted at gunpoint — destroyed what had been built. Between 1975 and 1984, over 500,000 Lebanese fled the country, 78% of them Christians. After the Islamist takeover of Iran in 1979, Hezbollah transformed Lebanon from the Paris of the Middle East into an Iranian forward operating base. The once-thriving Christian community has plummeted to roughly one-third of the population. Those who could leave did. Those who remained watch their country being held hostage.
What makes this tragedy even more painful for those who read the Hebrew Bible is that Lebanon’s connection to the Jewish people is ancient and deep. The name Levanon (לְבָנוֹן) — from the root lavan, meaning “white” — appears 71 times in the Bible, a reference to its snow-capped peaks. The land now called Lebanon was once the heart of ancient Phoenicia, home to Tyre and Sidon, and the source of the most prized timber in the ancient world. When King Solomon sought to build the Beit HaMikdash — the Holy Temple in Jerusalem — he sourced his materials from this very land. The Phoenician king Hiram of Tyre sent Lebanese cedar, carpenters, and masons to Jerusalem to build a palace for King David (2 Samuel 5:11). Likewise, Hiram provided cedars and artisans to King Solomon for the construction of his own palace as well as the Temple in Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 2:3,7; 1 Kings 5:20).
The Bible records the terms of this alliance with the precision of a trade agreement. Solomon wrote to Hiram: “Command that they cut me cedar trees out of Lebanon, and my servants shall be with thy servants; and unto thee will I give hire for thy servants according to all that thou shalt appoint” (1 Kings 5:20). In return, Solomon provided Hiram’s household with grain and oil year by year. The two kingdoms were bound together in the great project of building the House of God. The Old Testament mentions Lebanon by name 71 times, and one of the buildings in Solomon’s palace was even called “the house of the forest of Lebanon,” illustrating how much he used and prized this resource. The cedars of Lebanon did not merely build walls and ceilings. They built the earthly dwelling place for the Divine Presence. That Lebanon — the Lebanon of Hiram, of the cedars, of ancient alliance with Israel — is the Lebanon worth saving. That Lebanon is precisely what Hezbollah has been destroying.
Trump has said there is “a great chance” for a peace deal between Israel and Lebanon this year and that he hopes to host Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun at the White House in the near future. Whether Aoun — facing enormous domestic pressure and explicit threats from Hezbollah — will actually sit across from Netanyahu remains to be seen. What is clear is that the current Lebanese government and the State of Israel want the same thing: a Lebanon free from Hezbollah. The Sages teach that shalom (שָׁלוֹם) — peace — is one of the names of God. It is not merely the absence of war. It is wholeness, completeness, a world returned to its intended order. The land now called Lebanon was, in the days of Solomon, a partner in building God’s house. The question before Jerusalem, Beirut, and Washington right now is whether — 3,000 years later — it can become a partner in something nearly as consequential: building a future without Hezbollah.
Not everyone was optimistic about the ceasefire. Morton A. Klein, National President of the oldest pro-Israel organization in the United States, Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), released the following statement:
“ZOA is concerned about President Trump’s statement today extending the open-ended ceasefire with no specific deadline with the extremist Islamic Republic of Iran ‘until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal . . .[and] until such time as their proposal is submitted.’ The president stated that the extension was ’[b]ased on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so and, upon the request of [Pakistani] Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan.’
“The statement appears to give the Iranian terror regime the ability to extend the ceasefire indefinitely. Interminable delay is the standard Islamic Iranian regime negotiating tactic. This tactic has enabled the regime to continue its development of nuclear weapons and advanced ballistic weapons, and to continue terrorizing the world. All previous rounds of negotiations with the Iranian regime – including the negotiations two weeks ago – revealed the regime’s intransigent unwillingness to end its nuclear weapons, ballistic missile and terror capabilities and ambitions. Yet, the regime is now using new excuses for delay.
“ZOA is grateful for everything that President Trump, together with the U.S. military, have brilliantly been doing to bring the Iranian regime to its knees. U.S. Central Command reported today that ‘since the start of the U.S. blockade against ships entering or exiting Iranian ports, U.S. forces have directed 28 vessels to turn around or return to port.’ And yesterday, CENTCOM reported that U.S. forces seized and searched the Iranian-flagged M/V Touska, when Touska attempted to violate the U.S. naval blockade.
“We simply urge the president to be careful not to fall for the Islamic Iranian regime’s latest phony delaying tactic. A two-week ceasefire was more than enough time for an Iranian proposal.”
