Shadow of failed 1983 agreement haunts new Israeli-Lebanon talks
As Lebanon prepares to resume direct discussions with Israel, the ghost of the May 17 Agreement of 1983 – a deal that was signed but never implemented – is haunting the new round of negotiations. President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam are facing a smear campaign from Hezbollah, which has already rejected any compromise and issued thinly veiled threats against the country's leadership.
Issued on: 23/04/2026 - 17:10Modified: 23/04/2026 - 17:17
5 min Reading time Share By: Marc DAOU
Since the announcement of a new round of direct talks between Lebanon and Israel scheduled for Thursday, following a first meeting in Washington in early April, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam have been the targets of a smear campaign orchestrated by Hezbollah supporters.
The head of state, who is banking on the talks to secure an Israeli army withdrawal from southern Lebanon and a final demarcation of the shared border, was even the target of an implicit death threat issued by officials from the Shia party.
The threat was taken seriously in Beirut given the pro-Iranian movement’s track record, with several of its members convicted by the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) over the 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafic Hariri.
Senior Hezbollah official Nawaf Moussaoui warned in an interview with the party's Al-Manar television channel on Saturday that if the Lebanese president "wants to take decisions unilaterally, he is no more important than Anwar al-Sadat" – a reference to the Egyptian president who was assassinated in 1981, three years after signing a peace deal with Israel at Camp David.
Moussaoui added that any negotiation or agreement between Israel and Lebanon would be "rejected, unrecognised and thrown in the bin, like the May 17, 1983 agreement".
A deal that never took effect
That security agreement – never implemented – was officially signed by Israel and Lebanon under US auspices at Khaldeh, near Beirut, during the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990). Lebanon, then led by President Amine Gemayel (1982-1988), was at the time simultaneously occupied by both the Israeli and Syrian armies.
Ambassador Antoine Fattal headed the Lebanese delegation, while the Israeli team was led by diplomat David Kimche, with both sides facing US President Ronald Reagan's envoy Morris Draper, Under-Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.
The deal resulted from 35 Israeli-Lebanese meetings in late December 1982 and held alternately in Lebanon and Israel. Comprising a dozen articles, it was meant to be a first step towards lasting peace between the two countries.
Its preamble proclaimed "the termination of the state of war" between the two neighbours, who under article 2 committed to "settle their disputes by peaceful means".
The text provided for the creation of a security zone in southern Lebanon, a timetable for the withdrawal of Israeli forces and a commitment by each side not to allow its territory to be used as a base for "hostile or terrorist activity" against the other.
It even suggested future negotiations on "agreements on the movement of goods, products and persons and their implementation on a non-discriminatory basis".
Although ratified by the Lebanese parliament, the agreement was never promulgated by President Gemayel. In March 1984, it was abrogated by the council of ministers under pressure from Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and his Lebanese allies at the time – Druze warlord Walid Joumblatt and Nabih Berri, head of the Shia Amal militia and Lebanon's parliament speaker since 1992 – all of whom were hostile to any agreement with Israel.
Assad, with no small irony, told Gemayel that the abrogation was "a victory for the peoples of Syria and Lebanon and of the entire Arab nation" and that his country would "remain at Lebanon's side in its struggle for independence and sovereignty" – even as his army remained an occupying force in the country.
In a recent interview with the daily newspaper L'Orient-Le Jour, the former Lebanese president said Israel had not genuinely wanted to implement the May 17 agreement either, accusing it of having added "at the last minute, clauses to the previously negotiated text", including one requiring a simultaneous Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon – effectively giving Damascus veto power.
"It was a way of giving Damascus a veto," he said. "Especially since we had no control over the decision on the withdrawal of the Syrian army."
Read more‘Self-destructive, suicidal’: In Lebanon, anger rises against Hezbollah amid Israeli strikes
An Iranian veto?
Asked about this Lebanese-Israeli precedent in relation to the current situation, Sami Nader, director of the Institute of Political Science at Saint Joseph University in Beirut, pointed to a regional context entirely different from that of 1983.
“At the time, only Anwar al-Sadat’s Egypt had signed a peace agreement with Israel,” he explained, noting that the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan later joined the Abraham Accords under US President Donald Trump, while Jordan had signed a peace treaty in 1994. “Today, even Syria, which was once the main obstacle to the May 17 agreement, is ready to sign with the Israelis.”
Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Charaa said on Friday at a diplomatic forum in Turkey that he was open to direct negotiations with Israel over the occupied Golan Heights if a security deal guaranteed Israeli withdrawal from recently occupied Syrian territories.
"In 1983, Hezbollah, which had just been founded, did not yet have a say in Lebanon. Today it is the main obstacle to such negotiations, as is its Iranian patron, which opposes regional normalisation efforts with Israel," Nader said.
Direct talks between Lebanon and Israel would deprive Tehran of leverage, he added, because Iran wants Lebanon – through Hezbollah – to remain a strategic card.
A 'yellow line' that 'instils doubt'
Nader also noted a "fundamental difference" between the Israeli invasion of 1982 and the current one, "due to the famous yellow line drawn by the Netanyahu government, isolating part of the territory, devastated and emptied of its population".
Israeli authorities say they have drawn a "yellow line" deep inside southern Lebanon, claiming it is intended to protect northern Israeli communities from Hezbollah fire.
In Lebanon, the buffer zone – stretching hundreds of square kilometres from the Mediterranean coast to the Lebanese-Syrian border – is widely seen as a new unilateral border drawn by Israel.
In Gaza, a similar “yellow line” established after the October ceasefire cuts the territory from north to south between a Hamas-controlled zone and another effectively controlled by the Israeli army.
Watch moreGaza faces Israel’s ‘yellow line’
This yellow line "instils doubt about Israeli intentions", Nader insisted. "Because it is reminiscent of a scenario already seen in the Syrian Golan – a scenario of annexation – and no observer can rule out that possibility with the far-right government currently leading Israel."
"Even more than President Gemayel in 1983, President Aoun seems to believe that the only way for Lebanon to rule out such a scenario is to negotiate, that is, to seek peace, and therefore in a sense the disarmament of Hezbollah, in exchange for the conquered territory," he concluded.
"Because the other option, the military one advocated by the Shia party, allows the Israelis to justify their occupation of southern Lebanon."
This article was translated from the original in French by Anaëlle Jonah.
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