Lebanon seeks peace, but Hezbollah needs to be convinced first. 11 hours ago. Hugo BachegaMiddle East correspondent, Beirut. BBC. With Lebanon, again, engulfed by war, I remember a meeting I had with President Joseph Aoun at the Baabda Palace, a modernist building at the top of a hill overlooking Beirut last August.. Aoun, a former army chief, took office after a devastating war between Israel and Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia and political party that is backed by Iran. At that point, Hezbollah had been weakened and was isolated at home and Aoun had vowed to disarm it. The seemingly intractable issue over Hezbollah’s weapons has long divided Lebanon, but Aoun appeared to believe he could solve it. “I was born an optimist,” he told me.. At the time we met, a fragile ceasefire was in place in Lebanon. This deal had ended the war between Israel and Hezbollah in November 2024, but Israel was carrying out near-daily attacks on what it described as people and targets linked to the group. In some parts of the country, the conflict had never stopped. Even from my home in east Beirut I could occasionally hear the buzz of Israeli drones circling overhead.. Reuters. For Hezbollah’s supporters, the group is their only protection against Israel, which they see as an enemy intent on capturing Lebanese land. Opponents accuse Hezbollah, which is a Shia Muslim group, of defending the interests of its Iranian patron, dragging the country into unwanted and unnecessary wars.. When Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, was killed in a strike on the first day of the US-Israeli bombardment of Tehran in February, Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel. The group said this was in retaliation for his death and the constant Israeli bombing during the ceasefire; Israel responded with air strikes and another ground invasion of southern Lebanon.. Getty Images. President Aoun, hoping to stop the bloodshed, proposed to negotiate directly with Israel, a significant step for two countries that do not have diplomatic relations. Israel ignored the offer until last week, after the US agreed a ceasefire with Iran and Israel carried out widespread air strikes that killed more than 300 people in just one day in Lebanon.. A meeting between ambassadors from both countries, expected to focus on a ceasefire here, is scheduled to take place later on Tuesday in Washington. With very limited influence over Hezbollah, what can the Lebanese government do? And what are the chances of finding lasting peace?. Forged in conflict. Hezbollah, or Party of God in Arabic, was created in the 1980s during Israel’s occupation of Lebanon in the Lebanese Civil War. From its beginning, the group has been financed, trained and armed by Iran, and the destruction of Israel remains one of its official goals.. In 1989, the Taif Agreement that ended Lebanon’s conflict mandated the disarmament of all militias and introduced a power-sharing deal between sects in a country that is multi-cultural and multi-f
