Can Israel and Lebanon Finally Make Peace? The History, the Obstacles, and the Forces Standing in the Way

In this episode of The Middle East Breakdown, host Dan Feferman examines one of the most consequential diplomatic openings in the modern Middle East: the first publicly announced, state-level talks between Lebanon and Israel in decades, held in Washington under Secretary of State Marco Rubio. With a fragile ceasefire between the United States and Iran still holding, and Hezbollah pushing to link the two tracks together, the question of whether Lebanon can finally chart its own course toward peace with Israel has never been more urgent or more complicated.Joining the discussion is Hussain Abdul-Hussain, research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C., and author of the newly published book The Arab Case for Israel. A Lebanese-Iraqi journalist and analyst who was born and raised in Lebanon, studied at the American University of Beirut, worked as a reporter for the Daily Star, and appears regularly on Lebanese national television, Abdul-Hussain brings a rare insider perspective to the history of Lebanese-Israeli relations, the internal dynamics of Hezbollah, and the evolving public sentiment inside Lebanon's Shia community.The episode examines the full arc of Lebanon's entanglement with armed conflict, from the forced signing of the 1969 Cairo Agreement that allowed Palestinian militias to operate against Israel from Lebanese soil, to the 1983 peace agreement that was killed by Hafez Assad, to Israel's unilateral withdrawal in 2000 and the subsequent failure to disarm Hezbollah under UN Security Council Resolution 1701. The conversation addresses why Hezbollah was not formed as a reaction to Israel but as an extension of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, why a significant portion of Lebanon's Shia community now opposes Hezbollah, and what combination of international pressure, Lebanese consensus, and targeted sanctions could finally force the group to surrender its arms. The panel also explores the ideological and geopolitical role of Qatar in funding the Muslim Brotherhood and shaping the Western media narrative on the region, the myth of ancient Palestinian nationhood as argued in Abdul-Hussain's book, the radicalization of Arab and Muslim American political identity, and why the Abraham Accords model offers a more honest framework for regional progress than the one dominant in Western academic and media circles.Watch, listen, and subscribe for full episodes and regional analysis.Website: YouTube: Instagram: X: Spotify: