Shameful Israel-Lebanon 'agreement' evokes the Oslo disaster
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Ussama Makdisi
on
Mon, 06/29/2026 - 15:22
The capitulation document signed in Washington gives Tel Aviv a green light to continue its occupation of Lebanese territory
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio (centre of back row) looks on as Israeli, American and Lebanese officials sign a framework agreement in Washington, D.C., 26 June 2026 (Saul Loeb/AFP)
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There was a 19th-century Orientalist traveller and diplomat by the name of David Urquhart, who said about (Mount) Lebanon that there “never was a country for which God has done so much, nor a people who could do less for themselves”.
Such a description was unfair and stereotypical. But Urquhart was writing just as Lebanon was becoming a central node in both European imperialism and the Ottoman attempt to stymie that imperialism.
One of the results of this struggle was the emergence of a new “culture of sectarianism”, which anticipated the current Lebanese political system. Another result was the degree to which local actions and aspirations were thenceforth implicated within the great game of geopolitics, for which Lebanon was paradoxically both important and a sideshow at the same time.
Lebanon remains a paradoxical central node/sideshow of western imperialism, today of a US-Israeli project that appears to be trying to recover in and via Lebanon what it lost in its unsuccessful war on Iran.
The “framework agreement” accepted by the government of Lebanon has been severely criticised by many people who have actually read its text, including the respected journalist Helena Cobban, who noted: “So much for Lebanon’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.”
Iranian academic Hassan Ahmadian, who regularly appears on Al Jazeera, reminded his readers and viewers that this agreement was similar to the ones pursued by collaborationist regimes in “Saigon” and “Vichy” - both of which, of course, also claimed to be “sovereign” polities.
The head of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, called the “agreement” between Israel and Lebanon “humiliating, shameful, and a surrender of sovereignty”.
Relentless assaults
The Lebanese president and prime minister, meanwhile, both hailed the deal as a vital step to restore Lebanese “sovereignty” in the south of the country.
Yet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court over the genocide in Gaza, gloated that this “agreement” was a “major achievement” because it did not compel Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, instead putting the onus on the weak Lebanese army to disarm Hezbollah, while the Israeli military continues its occupation of the south.
All of this comes against the backdrop of relentless Israeli assaults on the Shia population of Lebanon for months on end, which have displaced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens, notoriously targeted journalists and paramedics, and killed, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, more than 4,200 people and wounded more than 12,000 others.
Israeli leaders, in any case, openly declare that they will not allow displaced Lebanese civilians to return to their homes in the areas occupied by Israel. As analyst Trita Parsi indicates, this deal undercuts, or attempts to undercut, the US-Iran memorandum of understanding, which clearly stipulates that there should be a comprehensive ceasefire in the region, including Lebanon.
There was, in fact, a prior May 1983 “agreement” between the leaders of (yet another) invading Israeli army and what was then a weak, pro-American Lebanese government installed in the aftermath of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
That “agreement” declared a termination of the “state of war” between Israel and Lebanon, although Israeli soldiers then occupied a vastly greater part of the country than the Israeli army does today.
Because it was so unpopular and illegitimate in the eyes of so many Lebanese people, that “agreement” was annulled following an uprising in February 1984 by various Lebanese militias and parties against the US-backed government.
Palestinian model
Fast forward four decades: at this point, it is worth understanding that Israel sees two models for Lebanon. One is the West Bank model, featuring a neutered Palestinian-Authority-style “government” that is totally subordinate to Israeli will, but financed by others to carry out “security” on behalf of Israel. This is the case in the contemporary West Bank, where Israeli settlers and soldiers routinely terrorise Palestinians, while Israel methodically annexes ever more Palestinian land.
The other option is the “Gaza model”, by which Israel means its campaign to obliterate and ethnically cleanse the south of Lebanon after having carried out genocide in Gaza. The irony is that no matter how many Lebanese people think their future is different from that of the Palestinians, history, geography, fate and geopolitics always trump anti-historical fantasies of separatism.
Lebanon: Those who resist Israel are now called internal enemies of the state
»
It is worth re-reading today the essay titled “The Morning After”, which Edward Said published in the London Review of Books about the Oslo Accords in 1993. Following the White House ceremony that featured Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, presided over by US President Bill Clinton, Said was scathing in his assessment.
“The fashion-show vulgarities of the White House ceremony, the degrading spectacle of Yasser Arafat thanking everyone for the suspension of most of his people’s rights, and the fatuous solemnity of Bill Clinton’s performance, like a 20th-century Roman emperor shepherding two vassal kings through rituals of reconciliation and obeisance: all these only temporarily obscure the truly astonishing proportions of the Palestinian capitulation,” Said wrote.
In the face of those who hailed the “peace process”, Said insisted: “Let us call the agreement by its real name: an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles.”
How many people, including many prominent Palestinians, then believed otherwise - whether out of desperate hope, exhaustion, naivete, bitterness, duplicity or self-delusion?
This article was first posted on Professor Ussama Makdisi’s Substack channel.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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