After six weeks of fighting, Israel and Lebanon appear to be on the verge of a ceasefire.
What to know about the Israel-Lebanon conflict
A journalist explains what it’s like in Lebanon right now.
President Donald Trump announced the 10-day pause, which he said would help “achieve PEACE” between the countries, in a social media post on Thursday. The ceasefire is set to take effect at 5 pm ET.
The agreement came after representatives of Israel and Lebanon met in Washington, DC, earlier this week for their first direct talks in decades, and amid the backdrop of an ongoing US-Iran ceasefire.
The most recent round of fighting began early last month, two days after the initial US and Israeli attacks on Iran, when the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah attacked a village in northern Israel.
Israel quickly retaliated, firing missiles and destroying homes in a war that has killed more than 2,000 people and displaced more than 1.2 million Lebanese. In the process, Israel has occupied about 15 percent of Lebanon’s territory; it says it expects to maintain that “buffer zone” until Hezbollah is disarmed, which could take years.
Under the terms of the ceasefire, Israeli troops would remain in southern Lebanon.
Nora Boustany, who reported from Lebanon and across the Middle East for the Washington Post for nearly three decades and now lives in Beirut, says that the greatest fear inside the country is that Israel’s occupation will continue.
“Lebanon is small,” Boustany told Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram. “It can be swallowed in two weeks, and it’s pretty defenseless at the moment.”
Boustany, who now teaches journalism at the American University of Beirut, spoke about Lebanon’s history, her fears as Israeli tanks once again roll through southern Lebanon, and what it’s like living in Beirut right now.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, which was recorded prior to Thursday’s ceasefire news. You can listen to it, and every episode of Today, Explained, wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Of the conflicts between Lebanon and Israel that we could look at from the past decades, what concerns you most? Is it that Lebanon could slip into another civil war as it did in the mid-1970s?
Right now the biggest fear is that — like in 1978 and in 1982 when the Israelis invaded and stayed, claiming that they needed to have this buffer zone — that we’ll have part of the country under occupation.
This is what got the Iranians involved. Hezbollah was created in 1982 on the heels of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. The [Lebanese] government was very weak then. We had the Palestine Liberation Organization and their guerillas, and driving them out took 20,000 lives at the time, mostly civilians. The country has never quite stood on its feet since then.
Iran started spending money and resources to recruit young Shiite men from those border villages and from the suburbs of Beirut to shield itself and to develop a foreign policy avenue where it could pressure the West.
At the time, the Iran-Iraq War had started. The Iranians felt that the US, Great Britain, all these Western countries were helping arm Saddam Hussein as he was fighting Iran. Lebanon was the ideal pressure point. American hostages were kidnapped and kept for seven years by groups that were paid by Iran. My big fear is that we’re going to lapse back into that.
Hezbollah are fighting for their political life and for legitimacy, and they may come out on top. This is something the Lebanese government doesn’t want and at least two-thirds of the Lebanese population doesn’t want. It means continuous instability, continuous warfare along our southern border with Israel, and an increasing security zone, which the Israelis feel they have to establish to keep their northern settlements safe.
“I do a lot of handholding online with my students because they are petrified, and pray that we are going to come out of this very, very dark tunnel.”
Lebanon is small. It can be swallowed in two weeks, and it’s pretty defenseless at the moment.
How much is what happened in Gaza plausible in Lebanon?
The Lebanese will not give up on their country easily. But what we saw in Gaza was on both sides a kind of depravity and also a lust for land that the Israelis made no secret of.
We were witnessing in real time — because of social media and because of Palestinian photographers and videographers in Gaza and in the West Bank — what was happening, and it’s scary.
Hezbollah is not as entrenched in civilian areas as Hamas was. It’s not in control, but it’s certainly fighting its corner and being defiant and very bellicose. And some of the Lebanese identify with it, and that’s really scary.
Israel’s conduct has not been encouraging either. What they did on Wednesday, [April 8], in 10 minutes was unspeakable. They killed over 350 people, a lot of them women and children.
I don’t see any difference between the Israelis and the Iranians in wanting to use the Lebanese as human shields, and that is petrifying.
This is a country that likes to have fun. People like to go out, go to restaurants, go to the beach. There are many universities, and all that is in peril right now.
Do you think there’s a scenario in which the people stand up and say, We’re sick of this. We don’t want Hezbollah to be waging war on Israel anymore because it presents this risk that southern Lebanon could turn into the next Gaza. Do you think there’s a way out?
People stand up and say it every single day on news platforms, podcasts, interviews.
It’s very easy to settle the issue in Lebanon: strengthening the government, helping it take care of its population that feels deprived — mainly a majority of the Shiite population, not all of them — so Iran doesn’t feel that it can come in and do what it wants. Lebanon needs help.
And yes, the Lebanese government has been bankrupt financially and is having a very hard time standing on its feet. But we have a very honest president, [Joseph Aoun] — maybe not the most creative or assertive president, but he was the commander of the army.
The prime minister, [Nawaf Salam], is a judge who headed the International Court of Justice. [He’s] very aware of what international law demands, yet lacking the tools or the toolbox to accomplish what a strong central government ought to be doing.
Saying history repeats itself feels like an understatement when it comes to Lebanon. How do you live with that day to day?
Everyone lives with it differently. I have cousins who live on the Christian side of Beirut. I live in the western side, which is very mixed, very blended, close to the American University [of Beirut]. I don’t go out. I leave the house twice a week to do my pilates class. I read all day. I do a lot of handholding online with my students because they are petrified, and pray that we are going to come out of this very, very dark tunnel.
There are 6 million Lebanese. They can’t all go. They can’t all leave. I happen to have a small flat in DC, but not everyone can do that. People have built rich lives here. We have a rich history here. I have a house in the country that’s been in the family for almost 470 years. I’m not going to abandon that.
You feel that the country is no longer as central to international concerns. The French talk a good game, the Brits as well. Maybe there’ll be a little humanitarian assistance, which is great. But Lebanon needs much more than that.
