Israel's 2026 war with Hezbollah and its first direct talks with Lebanon

On April 8, hours after a ceasefire took effect in the US-Iran war, Israel struck busy commercial and residential areas of central Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon, saying the Iran truce did not apply there. Lebanon's health ministry reported 182 people killed that day, the war's highest single-day death toll at the time.^[9] Days later Israeli and Lebanese officials met at the State Department in Washington for their first direct talks since 1993.^[3] President Donald Trump then announced a 10-day ceasefire,^[4] which was extended by three weeks^[10] and in May by 45 days as security talks opened in Washington.^[11]

Fighting continued through the truces. At the end of May, Israeli troops captured the strategic mountaintop Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon, in what the Israeli military described as its deepest incursion into the country in more than a quarter-century.^[2] In early June, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun accused Iran of using his country as a bargaining chip in its negotiations with the United States,^[12] and the United Nations more than doubled its aid appeal for Lebanon, to nearly $640 million over six months.^[13] In June, officials told AP that Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to halt fighting after an exchange of fire killed at least 47 people in Lebanon and four Israeli soldiers. Neither side immediately confirmed the reported truce.^[14]

On June 26, Israel and Lebanon signed a 14-point framework agreement in Washington after four days of US-mediated talks that did not include Hezbollah. It ties Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon to the group's disarmament.^[5] In July, under a US-backed plan, the Lebanese army deployed in the first "pilot zone," the village of Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh, a test of the arrangement for an Israeli pullout.^[6]

The ceasefire stopped fighting in much of Lebanon but not on Ali al-Taher hill, which overlooks parts of a main southern city and came under daily Israeli shelling and airstrikes.^[7] In September, Israel said it had destroyed Hezbollah tunnels beneath the ridge in blasts that registered as a magnitude 4.1 tremor.^[15] Later that month, the leaders of France, Lebanon and Jordan met in Paris to rally support for the Lebanese army, amid concern about the future of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon.^[16] In late October, a Lebanese judge charged people linked to Hezbollah with smuggling explosives.^[17]