President Trump announced on Thursday that the leaders of Israel and Lebanon have agreed to a 10-day cease-fire, a development that could bring an end to fighting between Israel and the Iranian-backed militant group, Hezbollah.
Mr. Trump’s announcement came after Israeli and Lebanese officials met this week in Washington for direct talks, a rarity because the two nations have technically been at war since 1948. Lebanon’s prime minister welcomed news of the cease-fire. Hezbollah and Israel have yet to comment.
Central to the dispute is Israel’s conflict with Lebanese-based Hezbollah militants, marked for decades by cross-border attacks, repeated Israeli invasions and tenuous truces. Lebanon’s government has been caught between the warring sides. It has long struggled to balance any effort to curb Hezbollah — whose forces outstrip the government’s in parts of the south — with fears of inflaming sectarian conflict.
Here’s a brief history of Israel-Lebanon relations:
Arab-Israeli wars
In 1948, five armies from Arab countries, including Lebanon’s, invaded Israel after it declared itself an independent state, sparking the first Arab-Israeli war. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled, including many to refugee camps in Lebanon.
In 1949, Israel and Lebanon agreed to an armistice along their internationally demarcated border, though they have never signed a formal peace treaty.
Two decades later, Lebanon did not join a coalition of Arab states that attacked Israel in 1967, setting off a renewed bout of fighting that ended six days later in the coalition’s defeat. Israel gained control of the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, displacing more Palestinians and leading to a buildup of more militants in Lebanon.
In March 1978, Israel invaded southern Lebanon for the first time, partly in response to an attack by Palestinian militants that left 35 Israelis and an American dead. Lebanese officials said 1,200 people died in the three-month invasion, during which Israel said it killed 350 Palestinian militants and lost 34 of its own soldiers.
Civil war and formation of Hezbollah
Against the backdrop of civil war in Lebanon, a brutal sectarian conflict that lasted until 1990 and resulted in 150,000 deaths, Israel occupied areas of southern Lebanon in 1982 and besieged Beirut, with the stated goal of rooting out Palestinian operatives.
In September 1982, a Lebanese Christian militia, enabled by Israeli military authorities, committed a massacre at two refugee camps in southern Beirut, Sabra and Shatila. The militiamen killed hundreds if not thousands of Palestinians — estimates of the death toll vary — prompting an international backlash and the resignation of Israel’s defense minister.
In response to Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon, militants there formed Hezbollah, a radical Shiite movement backed by Iran. Israeli forces occupied areas of southern Lebanon and battled Hezbollah until withdrawing in 2000.
Six years later, Hezbollah and Israel resumed fighting after a surprise incursion by the militant group in which eight Israeli soldiers were killed and two captured. The conflict, lasting 34 days, involved a third Israeli ground invasion, the bombardment of Beirut and the deaths of over 1,000 Lebanese, most of them civilians, and 150 Israelis, mostly soldiers.
Recent years
In a step toward warmer relations, Israel and Lebanon signed a maritime deal in 2022, brokered by the Biden administration, to better demarcate their shared border at sea. But any good will soon came under intense strain.
After Hamas, the Iran-backed militant group in Gaza, attacked southern Israel in October 2023, killing about 1,200 people, Hezbollah fired rockets on Israel in solidarity with Hamas. Repeated exchanges of fire culminated in Israel’s fourth ground invasion of Lebanon in October 2024, which it said was intended to remove Hezbollah’s military infrastructure used to attack towns in northern Israel.
After a cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel the following year, Lebanon’s government declared a renewed push to disarm Hezbollah under pressure from Washington.
Fighting flared again in March 2026 after the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, and Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel. Israel intensified its ground invasion of southern Lebanon, sending in thousands of troops and outlining plans to occupy about 10 percent of the country.
The post A Timeline of the Lebanon-Israel Relationship appeared first on New York Times.
