US must force Israel to change its Lebanon policy, analyst says

The United States will never push Israel toward a genuine shift in its military and political approach to Lebanon unless Washington is willing to apply direct, sustained pressure — not just diplomatic nudges. That’s the blunt assessment from Rami Khouri, a veteran Middle East analyst and senior fellow at the American University of Beirut, who argues that decades of half-measures have brought the region to its current breaking point.

Voluntary change isn’t coming

Khouri’s argument is straightforward, if uncomfortable for Western policymakers. Israel won’t alter its posture in Lebanon on its own. It didn’t after the 2006 war, which killed roughly 1,200 Lebanese civilians and displaced nearly a million people. And it hasn’t in the months since cross-border escalations resumed with new intensity following the October 7 Hamas attacks. So expecting a different result from the same diplomatic playbook, he says, is simply not realistic.

“The history of this conflict tells us one thing clearly — Israeli policy in Lebanon only shifts when external constraints make the current path too costly,” a regional security analyst familiar with Khouri’s work told this reporter. “Washington holds most of those constraints.”

What ‘forcing’ actually means

Khouri isn’t calling for military confrontation. But he is calling for something that’s been largely absent from US policy: conditionality. That means tying the $3.8 billion in annual military aid Washington sends to Israel to measurable behavioral changes. It means using America’s veto power at the UN Security Council as genuine leverage, not a reflexive shield. And it means engaging directly with Lebanese political actors — including Hezbollah’s rivals and the Lebanese Armed Forces — rather than routing everything through Tel Aviv.

None of that is happening now.

The cost of inaction

Lebanon was already in catastrophic shape before the latest round of fighting. Its economy contracted by more than 58% between 2019 and 2021, one of the worst collapses in modern history outside active wartime. More than 80% of the population now lives below the poverty line. Each new cycle of Israeli military operations, Khouri argues, doesn’t just cause immediate damage — it systematically destroys whatever institutional capacity Lebanon is trying to rebuild.

Still, Washington has shown little appetite for the kind of muscular diplomacy Khouri is describing. The Biden administration dispatched envoys, issued statements, and urged restraint. But it didn’t slow arms deliveries or signal any red lines around Lebanese civilian infrastructure.

What comes next

With a new US administration now settling into office, some analysts see a narrow window for recalibration. Whether that window gets used is another question. Khouri’s position is that it won’t — not without domestic political pressure inside the US and coordinated messaging from Arab and European allies willing to push harder than they have before.

The region, he warns, can’t absorb another decade of managed instability. At some point, the cost of America’s passivity in Lebanon stops being Lebanon’s problem alone.