A Peace Only in Name

Individuals and institutions in Washington are mounting a risky campaign to show that a Lebanon-Israel settlement is close.

An extraordinary little lobbying campaign is taking place today in Washington, one that involves a number of Lebanese citizens, among them researchers active in U.S. think tanks close to Israel, the think tanks themselves, and some Lebanese Americans. This group is trying to legitimize the idea that, after Hezbollah’s defeat in 2024, Lebanon is now ripe for peace with Israel—a new Abraham Accord.

Whatever the desirability of peace between the two countries, the real problem with the efforts of this group is twofold: they are spreading a false narrative that peace is within reach, when there appears to be no indication in Lebanon that this is true; and they are ignoring, perhaps consciously, the regional ramifications and perils of pushing Lebanon into an Israeli sphere of influence, which a peace agreement would surely do.

What is equally remarkable, and revealing, is that the Lebanese in this group are quite open about their admiration for Israel. A central figure in the effort is Antoun Sehnaoui, a movie producer and banker, who is chairman of the board of the SGBL Group, which includes several banks as well as the Fidus wealth management and brokerage firm. Sehnaoui has considerable influence in Lebanon, is said to back several parliamentarians, and is widely regarded as having the leverage to get his political priorities across through prominent Lebanese journalists and public figures. He also owns a news website called This Is Beirut, the English-language version of the French-language Ici Beyrouth that is mainly focused on Lebanese affairs. Full disclosure, many years ago I wrote for Executive, a Sehnaoui-owned monthly business publication.

In recent months, Sehnaoui has taken a more public stance in expressing his friendliness toward Israel. In July 2025, for instance, he funded a collaboration between the Washington National Opera and the Israeli Opera. While media reports did not say how much he had donated, Sehnaoui’s critics in Lebanon pointed out that he had provided the funds while depositors in his Lebanese bank have been struggling to access their accounts since 2019, when the country’s financial system collapsed.

A Sehnaoui adviser, Hagar Hajjar Chemali, who is a former director for Lebanon and Syria at the National Security Council, has also been active in supporting Lebanese-Israeli peace. She once advised Daniel Glaser, a former deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes at the Treasury Department, and Glaser and Sehnaoui are co-founders of the U.S.-Israel Opera Initiative. Chemali described Sehnaoui’s motives in this way to Washington Jewish Week: “Mr. Sehnaoui grew up in a Lebanese family that has always felt strongly about Israel and Zionism. This sentiment is really part of his family culture and has spanned generations… [H]e grew up understanding the need for a Jewish state. But more than that, he views Zionism and Israel’s existence as necessary for peace and stability in Lebanon and the Levant more broadly.”

This is Beirut has served as a platform for other outspoken Lebanese supporters of peace with Israel, including Hanin Ghaddar of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Hussain Abdul-Hussain of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Both, incidentally, appeared in a photograph celebrating the U.S.-Israel Opera Initiative with Sehnaoui and Chemali. Their institutions are regarded as strongly supportive of Israel and its alliance with the United States. Ghaddar recently interviewed Israel’s ambassador in Washington for This Is Beirut, in which he sent a message of peace to Lebanon. She has also written articles on the desirability of Lebanon joining the Abraham Accords.

Abdul-Hussain has taken a similar tack in This is Beirut, welcoming the fact that “voices for peace with Israel [are] now rising in Lebanon.” The only problem is that in the article making this claim, he failed to identify such voices. Instead, he pointed to two individuals, both Shiites, Marwan al-Amin and Bashshar Haidar, who had implied how Hezbollah’s military defeat in 2024 might strengthen the Lebanese state and its sovereignty, but otherwise did not address peace at all in their comments. Somewhat weakly, Abdul-Hussain fell back on an Arabic proverb, “Rain starts with a drop.”

Another Sehnaoui contributor who has endorsed peace between Lebanon and Israel is the former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon David Hale, a distinguished diplomatic fellow at the Middle East Institute (MEI). In January 2025, he wrote an article, this time for Ici Beyrouth, arguing, “The benefits of such a peace seem evident. Such progress would favor confidence and security, creating an environment favorable for new investments, the return of expatriate funds, the development of tourism, and sustained economic growth.”

Hale’s views are no less legitimate than Ghaddar’s and Abdul-Hussain’s. However, in looking at the details, the multifaceted Sehnaoui connection comes up again, as MEI records show that he paid $250,000 to the institute. Nothing improper has occurred here, it must be underlined, and all three writers may very well have expressed their true opinions. However, it’s evident that a preeminent supporter of Lebanese-Israeli peace has provided access to individuals in various prestigious Washington institutions, one of which he’s funding, to express views advancing an agenda he favors.

In a sign of its sway, the Washington Institute recently managed to get three of its researchers invited to speak before a hearing of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to discuss “dismantling Hezbollah’s grip on power.” No representative of any other think tank, particularly one likely to present an alternative viewpoint, was invited. In her remarks, Ghaddar expressed a rationale for peace between Lebanon and Israel that tied in with the hearing’s theme, but that also echoed what Chemali had described as the basis for Sehnaoui’s support for Israel.

Ghaddar stated, “Finally, the United States should recognize that peace is not separate from this effort [to exert external pressure on Hezbollah], it is what sustains it over time. The idea of peace is no longer taboo [in Lebanon]. Peace raises the political costs of [Hezbollah’s] rearmament, strengthens state legitimacy, unlocks economic recovery, and deprives Hezbollah of its core justification. Without a credible peace horizon, disarmament and economic reform will become temporary. With one, they become structural… Lebanon is closer to that moment [of peace] than many may assume, but only if U.S. policy is firm, comprehensive, and willing to raise the cost of obstruction.”

Many Lebanese would agree that Hezbollah’s refusal to disarm, like its umbilical relationship with Iran, has been catastrophic for Lebanon. The party, fearing that popular discontent would destabilize its own power in the Lebanese system, was a principal supporter of the political class during the uprising of 2019–2020, dispatching thugs into the streets of Beirut to intimidate and silence those demonstrating against the corrupt political class. However, Ghaddar’s associating peace with Hezbollah’s marginalization and a reinforcement of the state’s legitimacy was intriguing, largely because she seemed not to consider that Israel’s version of peace is likely to include conditions that undermine the sovereignty of the Lebanese state­—therefore its legitimacy if these conditions are accepted.

That is not the only flaw in the thinking of the Washington group. They have discounted that there are important segments of Lebanon’s population that reject peace with Israel, which means that pushing for such an outcome would create deep rifts within the society. Some polls confirm this view. A recent poll conducted across the Arab world by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, for example, found that only 9 percent of Lebanese supported recognizing Israel, which would be a prerequisite for any peace deal. The sample included 41,130 respondents, and even taking into consideration a margin of error, the figure is surprisingly low.

Little is taking place in Lebanon to indicate that the reality on the ground is different. The official Lebanese position is to endorse the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, which offers Israel peace in exchange for withdrawing from all Arab territories occupied in 1967 and accepting a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Ghaddar and Abdul-Hussain, neither of whom has visited Lebanon in over a decade (though in Ghaddar’s case, through no fault of her own), were unable to muster more than an argument that peace is being discussed in the country, which means very little. Based on anecdotal evidence, I may even be willing to accept that the 9 percent figure is lower than reality, but still nothing really suggests that Lebanon is ready for a settlement.

A second problem concerns the regional implications, and here the matter becomes more complicated. Today, Lebanon is one of the countries caught up in a regional struggle for power, primarily between four major actors—Israel, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. At the heart of the thinking among these four is a desire to prevent any one country, or coalition of countries, from imposing its regional hegemony on all, in what is a classic balance of power game. Therefore, each side is seeking to preserve its own zones of influence, while preventing rivals from expanding zones of influence of their own.

Since Israel’s attacks against Iran and Qatar last year, the three other countries have sought to contain what they view as a rising Israel backed by the United States. Türkiye and Israel are rivals in Syria, where they have de facto zones of influence. Israel in the past year has sought to rein in the Turkish zone, albeit unsuccessfully. The Saudis, who have similar interests as the Turks in the country, have warned Syria’s leadership against moving toward peace negotiations with Israel, no doubt seeing this as a move that would undermine Saudi conditions for any eventual negotiations with Israel. In such a context, one has to assume that a similar message would be passed on to the Lebanese: You’re free to discuss border demarcation and security guarantees with the Israelis, but not to embark on peace talks. For now, the Lebanese have not indicated an intention to depart from this line, but there are no guarantees that they would be able to resist a major U.S. and Israeli push to bring Lebanon into a new Abraham Accord.

If Lebanon were bludgeoned into negotiating peace with Israel through escalating Israeli attacks on the country, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Iran would likely collaborate to prevent any progress by mobilizing their constituents on the ground. This would turn Lebanon into a regional football and divide its society even more than it already is. The standard riposte from the Washington peace promoters against those cautioning about such an outcome is to say that they “oppose peace.” The reality is much simpler. If peace is going to lead to domestic discord in Lebanon, bring more outside pressure on the country, and transform it into a playing field for regional rivalries, all so that Israel can impose a Pax Israelica on its northern neighbor, then what will ensue is a peace without peace.

What we are seeing with the peace crowd is not a sinister cabal, but a tried and tested Washington lobbying effort, deploying a familiar modus operandi. They have created an information loop, where a small number of people is generating and sharing a message that Lebanon is ready for peace with Israel, one that it then spreads through media outlets, other forums, and even Congress to create a legitimized talking point. The only problem is that virtually none of these people has set foot in Lebanon for quite some time, seems to care that what they are promoting is wholly detached from Lebanese realities, or has considered the very real risks of forcing an Israeli peace on a fragile and fragmented Lebanon.