Israel–Lebanon relations have been characterized by armed conflict, mutual hostility, and the absence of diplomatic relations since the establishment of Israel in 1948. Lebanon participated in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and although it signed an armistice agreement with Israel in 1949, the two countries remain in a formal state of war and continue to regard each other as enemy states under aspects of their domestic law.
From 1949 until the late 1960s, the Israel–Lebanon border was generally the quietest of Israel's frontiers with neighboring Arab states. Relations deteriorated following the arrival of Palestinian militant groups in southern Lebanon, contributing to repeated cross-border hostilities, the 1978 Israeli invasion, the 1982 Lebanon War, Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon until 2000, and the rise of Hezbollah. The two countries signed the U.S.-brokered May 17 Agreement in 1983, intended to normalize relations, but it was never fully implemented and was annulled by Lebanon the following year.
Since Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, relations have remained hostile, marked by periodic military confrontations, including the 2006 Lebanon War, 2024 Lebanon War, and 2026 Lebanon War.
History Background (1948–1970) Lebanon played a small part in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, where its army only participated in the battle of al-Malikiya on 5–6 June 1948. During Operation Hiram, Israel captured 15 villages in Southern Lebanon up to the Litani River. While one Israeli general proposed capturing Beirut, which he claimed could be done in 12 hours, Israel's Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion refused permission. The armistice agreement between Lebanon and Israel Armistice Agreement UN Doc S/1296 23 March 1949 was relatively straightforward. Unlike the other armistice agreements, there was no clause disclaiming the Blue Line as the international border between Lebanon and the former British Mandate of Palestine (unrelated to the now government of Palestine) continued to be treated as the de jure international border. As a result, Israeli forces withdrew from the villages it had seized during offensive operations in October 1948.
Unlike in other Arab states, the Jewish population of Lebanon grew after the 1948 founding of the State of Israel, mostly due to the large Christian population in Lebanon.
In the early 1950s, direct flights linking Beirut with East Jerusalem were not uncommon. In 1951, Middle East Airlines, Lebanese national flag-carrier, expanded its regional network to include East Jerusalem, Jordan. Also, Air Liban, another Lebanese airline carrier, had flight routes linking Beirut with Jerusalem since 1945. However, the 1967 Six-Day War disrupted Middle East Airlines' operations for about two weeks, and led to the suspension of flights to Jerusalem. Lebanon played a minor role in the Six-Day War, carrying out a single air raid on the first day of the war in which it lost one aircraft.
During the Yom Kippur War, Lebanon sent radar units to Syria for air defense, but refrained from participating in the war.Rabinovich, I. The War for Lebanon, 1970–1985. p.105. "Lebanon was perceived as Israel's one harmless neighbour, a state that since 1949 had not taken part in the Arab–Israeli wars …"
Following Black September in Jordan in 1970–71, the PLO relocated from Jordan to Southern Lebanon, from where it had carried out attacks against Israel. Israel did not refrain from targeting Lebanese infrastructure when retaliating for fedayeen attacks, notably in the 1968 raid on Beirut Airport. This turned Lebanon, which had largely stayed out of the Arab-Israeli armed conflicts, into a battleground between Israel and Palestinian fedayeen.
Lebanese Civil War and Israeli intervention (1975–1990) The Lebanese Civil War began in 1975 when Phalangist gunmen ambushed a bus, killing the 27 Palestinian passengers onboard. The complexities of the war were tied to Lebanon's sectarian political structure dividing Shia and Sunni Muslims and Christians.
In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon in the middle of the civil war after a gunman from Abu Nidal's organization attempted to assassinate Shlomo Argov. The Israeli Prime Minister blamed the PLO for the incident, and used it as an excuse to begin Operation Peace for Galilee and the 1982 Lebanon War. During the invasion Israel allied with the Phalangist Christian militant group against the PLO and Shia militias. UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) wrote that from the beginning of the Israeli attack on June 4 to August 15, 1982, 29,506 Lebanese and Palestinians had been killed as a result of the Israeli bombardments, 80% of them civilians. Several thousand people were arrested and kept in Israeli-controlled prisons. The Israeli army cut off electricity and water supply to West Beirut, depriving at least 300,000 civilians of water and electricity for about three months. The MacBride Commission published a report in 1983 which said that the scale of the destruction showed that the Israeli army had blanket-bombed areas instead of attacking defined targets. Their bombardment of residential neighborhoods of West Beirut was extensive, and there was widespread destruction of civilian properties. In cases of hospital destruction, the commission said there were no weapons or ammunition in the establishments, yet the Gaza hospital was bombed heavily for three hours.
After the PLO was ejected from Lebanon's capital Beirut in the summer of 1982, Israel hoped to help put Christian Bachir Gemayel in power as Lebanese president. Bachir Gemayel flew to the Israeli coastal town of Nahariya to talk with Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon. Begin and Sharon proposed that Israel and Lebanon establish full diplomatic relations, but Gemayel proposed a kind of formal non-aggression pact. When Sharon reminded Gemayel that Israel controlled most of Lebanon at that time and that it would be wise to follow Israel's instructions, Gemayel held out his hands and replied "Put the handcuffs on. [...] I am not your vassal." Gemayel left Israel without making any formal agreement. Before the elections, he was assassinated by the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, throwing Lebanon again into crisis.
Following the assassination of Lebanese President by oppositional factions, the Israeli army occupied Beirut, and allowed the Lebanese Forces (LF) to enter the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, where the LF carried out a massacre of mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites. Between 1,390 and 3,500 civilians were massacred. It sparked international outrage for Israel's actions, particularly because the PLO had already been removed from Lebanon. The Kahan Commission by the Israeli government found Defense Minister Ariel Sharon personally responsible for the bloodshed. The incident led to his resignation as Defense Minister, however he remained in the Israeli Cabinet and would later become Israeli Prime Minister in 2001.
Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement on May 17, 1983 which was a peace treaty in all but name. Lebanon signed the agreement under American and Israeli pressure, but it was opposed by Syria. The agreement was conditional on Syrian withdrawal, which did not occur until April 2005. Much of the content of the treaty was contained in secret protocols and memoranda, and it did not win expected Jordanian and Saudi endorsement. The Lebanese legislature ratified the treaty by a margin of 80 votes, but in a very weak and unstable domestic position, president Amine Gemayel abrogated the peace treaty on March 5, 1984 under unrelenting Syrian pressure and takeover of West Beirut by Druze and Shiite militias, after the U.S. Marines withdrew and after Israel had begun withdrawing from Lebanon.
Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon (1990s) The Lebanese Civil War gradually came to a halt after the 1989 Taif Agreement. Furthermore, the success of the 1991 Persian Gulf War created new opportunities for Middle East peacemaking. In October 1991, under the sponsorship of the United States and the then Soviet Union, Middle East peace talks were held in Madrid, where Israel and a majority of its Arab neighbors conducted direct bilateral negotiations to seek a just, lasting, and comprehensive peace based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 (and 425 on Lebanon) and the concept of "land for peace." Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and representatives of the Palestinians continued negotiating until the Oslo interim peace accords were concluded between Israel and the Palestinians in September 1993 and Jordan and Israel signed an agreement in October 1994. In March 1996, Syria and Israel held another round of Madrid talks; the Lebanon track did not reconvene.
During this time, Israel continued to militarily occupy 10% of Lebanese land, in a southern strip called the South Lebanon Security Belt. In response, the militant Shia group Hezbollah formed with Syrian and Iranian backing. They conducted guerrilla warfare against Israel to resist the occupation. In 1990, the Israeli army burned down olive groves to "deprive Hezbollah guerrillas of cover". The Israeli army planted some 130,000 land mines throughout the strip, making farming deadly. As tensions continued to grow, in 1993 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin launched "Operation Accountability", with the intention of cutting Hezbollah's supply lines, destroying its camps, and forcing Lebanese civilians to flee north. In early April 1996, Israel conducted the military operation "Grapes of Wrath" in response to Hezbollah's actions on Israeli military bases in south Lebanon. The 16-day operation caused hundreds of thousands of civilians in south Lebanon to flee their homes. On April 18, several Israeli shells struck refugee compounds, killing 102 civilians sheltered there.
Throughout the 1990s, discontent had been growing in Israel about the occupation of parts of Lebanon. Discontent increased as a result of a 1997 helicopter crash that killed 73 Israeli soldiers bound for Lebanon. Ehud Barak campaigned for prime minister on a platform of withdrawing from Lebanon. On June 28, 1999 Farid Abboud, the Lebanese ambassador to the U.S., addressed the Los Angeles World Affairs Council to give an update on the peace process. Finally, on May 23, 2000, the Israeli military carried out a withdrawal of Israeli troops from the south and the Bekaa valley, effectively ending 22 years of occupation. The SLA collapsed and about 6,000 SLA members and their families fled the country, although more than 2,200 had returned by December 2001. With the withdrawal of Israeli forces, many in Lebanon began calling for a review of the continued presence of Syrian troops, estimated in late 2001 at approximately 25,000.
The destruction of Lebanese infrastructure that the Israeli military left behind, particularly water infrastructure, was devastating to Southern Lebanon. The Lebanese government turned to organizations such as the Arab Fund, the Kuwait Fund, and the Council for Development and Reconstruction, who invested around $50 million to rebuild water networks, and $63 million to rebuild schools, hospitals, and electricity infrastructure that had been destroyed.
Post-withdrawal relations (2000s)