For Hezbollah, these are trying times. After decades of being Lebanon’s predominant political and military organization, the group is reeling. During a yearlong war with Israel, it lost much of its military infrastructure. Its leadership ranks were decimated.
How Hezbollah Ends
Foreign Affairs
The election of President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam is a political breakthrough in Lebanon and a harbinger of what could happen in a country long dismissed as unsalvageable. Beirut’s new leadership reflects the aspiration of a majority of the Lebanese people to live in a functioning state free from the dual drivers of its failure: political violence and pervasive corruption
The way forward in Lebanon
Middle East Institute
Salam has promised to enforce accountability and implement the ceasefire with Israel; independent Shia cabinet ministers can help him reach those goals while showing there is an alternative to Hezbollah.
Lebanons New Prime Minister Approaches the Next Crossroads on Hezbollah
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
The war on Lebanon, while selective and impacting some sectors less than others, has left no sector untouched. Niche businesses in the real economy — those small, specialized enterprises that often represent the heart of the community — are more vulnerable than large enterprises
From Struggle to Strength: Lebanons Agro-entrepreneurs in Uncertain Times
Executive
Several Israeli attacks on Hezbollah communication systems, aerial attacks on its rocket launchers and caches, assassination of much of the movement’s top leadership and now an Israeli ground offensive form a macabre dance with assaults in the form of relentless Hezbollah rocket and drone attacks on northern Israel, as well as a direct Iranian missile attack more recently. The air hangs heavy with threats of retaliation.
The elusive Israeli quest for strategic victory
Fanack
Recently, the IDF began a ground operation in southern Lebanon, following the addition of “safely returning northern residents to their homes” to Israel’s war objectives. In this document we analyze potential achievements of a land manoeuvre in Lebanon and alternatives implementation.
The IDF Ground Operation in Lebanon. Goals, Alternatives and Consequences
The Institute for National Security Studies
On September 30, after a devastating ten-day stretch culminating in Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati announced his government’s support for implementing UN Security Council Resolution 1701. The 2006 resolution was endorsed by Beirut, but the state never implemented its most important provision
In Lebanon, a Rare Moment of Opportunity
The Washington Institute
Given the current lack of viable security alternatives on the Israel-Lebanon border, Washington may try to patch up UNIFIL’s many deficiencies—but it must do so with a clear understanding that the force has repeatedly failed its mission and squandered its credibility.
The Pros and Cons of Salvaging (or Ditching) UNIFIL
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Lebanon’s central bank Banque du Liban has achieved 12 months of exchange rate stability. Foreign currency reserves have recently clawed back above $10 billion. At the one-year mark of Wassim Mansouri’s reign as acting governor, economist Layal Mansour lauds his disciplined implementation of a quasi-currency board solution but urges this solution’s full and formal adoption.
The paradox of the Lebanese pounds recent stability
Executive
As tensions between Israel and Hezbollah escalate, the specter of a full-scale war, with the potential to draw in the United States and Iran, demands the US’ immediate attention. The Biden-Harris Administration has tasked, in response, White House Senior Advisor Amos Hochstein with the responsibility of mediating efforts to de-escalate the conflict and bring stability to the Lebanon-Israel border
Securing Lebanon to Prevent a larger Hezbollah-Israel war and wider escalation
American Task Force on Lebanon and The Middle East Institute
Food security is a prerequisite for any people’s sovereignty. The need for food’s physical and mental sustenance affects every human being with an existential might. It consequently ranks in import perhaps second only after the need for a planetary home with breathable air and stable gravity.
Harvesting Reforms: Lebanons Food Security and Sovereignty
Executive magazine
Nearly six months into the Gaza war, Israel has come to the realization that the pre-October 7 status quo in south Lebanon is no longer tenable. Whether a new status quo is established through negotiation or force of arms, something will have to give—the question is when and under what circumstances. Either way, the United States can and should take more steps to defer escalation.
Changing the Israel-Lebanon Status Quo: U.S. Options
The Washington institute for Near East Policy
In 2021-22, the Reform Initiative for Transparent Economies (RITE), a non-governmental organization (NGO) based in the United Kingdom that is headed by this author, conducted an independent case study to demonstrate the challenges facing donors in Lebanon. It published its heavily referenced findings along with evidence-based recommendations
A better development funding model for Lebanon: Prospects, challenges, and applicable lessons
Middle East Institute
The Lebanon Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) aligns the country’s short-term recovery needs with resilient, low-carbon, long-term development, building on quantitative modeling-based analytics, existing research and country diagnostics, and extensive stakeholder consultations to study the effects of climate change on Lebanon’s recovery and development objectives.
Lebanon Country Climate and Development Report
World Bank Group
In Gaza, Lebanon, and beyond, Paris continues to favor multilateral approaches that incorporate key regional partners, though it understands Washington’s paramount role in achieving regional stability.
Frances Diplomatic Role in the Middle East Post-October 7
The Washington Institute for Near Policy
Skirmishes on the Israel-Lebanon border have been bloody but within bounds and attacks on U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq by Iran-backed groups have led to calibrated U.S. retaliation. Iran retains a potential trump card, however, in the form of its advancing nuclear program.
Will the Gaza War Affect Irans Nuclear Strategy?
Stimson
Lebanon needs a new aid strategy. It will need generous support to recover when reforms are initiated. But it also needs all the help it can get now to alleviate its current misery. What is required is a donor strategy that walks on two legs: a first leg that offers a big reconstruction push conditioned on economic and institutional reforms and, in parallel, a second leg that provides urgent support to the Lebanese population.
Lebanon needs a renewed donor support strategy
Middle East Institute
Capital investment is needed to fund the green transition. This means that the finance sector must be involved in combating the climate crisis in countries around the world, including Lebanon. This column argues that to ensure that these funding needs are met, policy-makers should work in harmony with other stakeholders to ensure that businesses are incentivized to de-carbonise their operations. Only by easing the process of the green transition through sustainable financing can countries like Lebanon meet their environmental pledges. Policy action to support such funding is needed urgently.
Reframing Sustainable Finance: Lessons from Lebanon
Economic Research Forum
Even if much-needed prosecutions against Hezbollah members are deemed too dangerous at present, donors must still pressure Beirut to extradite other individuals charged with crimes abroad, starting with banking official Riad Salameh.
Lebanon Is a Global Sanctuary for Criminals
Washington Institute
In March 2020, Lebanon opted for a “hard default” on $32 billion in sovereign debt, allowing the government to avoid negotiating with its Eurobond holders and investors. Beirut thereafter showed little interest in addressing the consequences of default, and the country’s economic meltdown worsened. As usual, the Lebanese people were the casualties, suffering amid what the World Bank has called a “deliberate depression.” This official negligence has cleared the way for a proliferating cash economy—which in turn has spawned a currency exchange scheme involving the central bank, foreign exchange agents, and Lebanese politicians.
Cash Cabal: How Hezbollah Profits from Lebanons Financial Crisis
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Exorbitant food prices and food shortages—and, at one point, long queues for bread—became the norm in Lebanon following the country’s economic collapse in 2019, which sent shockwaves across all sectors of the economy and led to hyperinflation. By December 2022, 1.29 million Lebanese (one-third of the resident population) and 700,000 Syrian refugees (almost half the total in Lebanon) were facing severe food insecurity, with projections indicating a continued rise in 2023.
Breaking the Cycle: Toward a New Imaginary of the Food System in Lebanon
Carnegie Middle East Center
By revamping its social protection system, Lebanon could address its current economic crisis and restore public trust in the government. Lebanon is in need of a revamped social protection system for all its citizens at the different stages of their lives. Such a universal system must ensure access to social security, social assistance and care, and labor market programs. It should also underpin a strengthened social contract to replace the weak one in place prior to 2019, in which the state’s role was limited.
How Better Social Protection Can Strengthen Lebanons Social Contract
Carnegie Middle East Center
Lebanon is sliding into “failed state” status. The country has been limping along with a weak interim executive while the presidency has been vacant for over six months. A full restoration of the country’s leading governance institutions is needed as a first step to implement the long-awaited economic and fiscal reforms required to fulfill an International Monetary Fund bailout of $3 billion.
Can the Saudi Iranian Raprocchement Help Adress Lebanons Governance Crisis?
Brookings
In late 2022, Israel and Lebanon signed a US-brokered maritime agreement establishing their permanent maritime boundary and exclusive economic zones and regulating their rights to gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean. Preceding the agreement was a sustained coercive-diplomacy campaign by Hezbollah. Between June and October, the organization conveyed overt and covert threats, and it pursued actions that were unprecedented in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
Hezbollahs Coercion and the Israel-Lebanon Maritime Deal
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Behind a façade of normalization of crisis conditions, the Lebanese economy remains in precipitous decline, markedly distant from a stabilization path, let alone a recovery path, according to the latest World Bank Lebanon Economic Monitor released today. The systemic failure of Lebanon’s banking system and the collapse of the currency have induced a pervasive dollarized cash economy estimated at almost half of GDP in 2022.
Lebanon Economic Monitor, Spring 2023: The Normalization of Crisis is No Road for Stabilization
Relief Web
Behind a façade of normalization of crisis conditions, the Lebanese economy remains in precipitous decline, markedly distant from a stabilization path, let alone a recovery path, according to the latest World Bank Lebanon Economic Monitor released today. The systemic failure of Lebanon’s banking system and the collapse of the currency have induced a pervasive dollarized cash economy estimated at almost half of GDP in 2022.
Lebanon Economic Monitor, Spring 2023: The Normalization of Crisis is No Road for Stabilization
Relief Web
This policy brief examines the historical context and current state of corruption in Lebanon. Despite numerous promises and commitments by successive governments to tackle corruption, Lebanon continues to be synonymous with weak state institutions, bad governance, and failure to provide public services and social welfare.
Understanding the Politics of Anti-Corruption in Lebanon
European Institute of the Mediterranean
The present report is the thirty-seventh semi-annual report of the SecretaryGeneral on the implementation of Security Council resolution 1559 (2004). It provides a review and assessment of the implementation of the resolution since the issuance of the previous report on the subject (S/2022/749), on 11 October 2022, and covers developments until 24 March 2023.
Implementation of Security Council resolution 1559 (2004)
UN Security Council
Lebanon is experiencing a constantly evolving multi-layered crisis which is exacerbating long-term structural vulnerabilities, reversing previously made development gains, and leading to acute and increasingly visible humanitarian needs among the most vulnerable populations.
Lebanon Emergency Response Plan 2022 - 2023
Relief Web
As a result of the riots of May 2021, a number of justifiable decisions were made about establishing a National Guard, as part of the Israel Police. The initiative to establish the present force, which Minister Ben-Gvir demands that it be subordinate to his ministry, not only will weaken the Police but will also be expensive and complicated and will cause difficult organizational obstacles that will harm the other security and enforcement organizations—including the IDF.
The Israeli Border Police: Toward Fundamental Changes in its Mission and Responsibilities?
The Institute for National Security Studies