The French government is scrambling to end Lebanon’s second war in two years , amid mounting human and material costs and the looming threat of an expanded Israeli invasion.
While there are as yet no signs of either Israel or Hezbollah seeking peace, France has drafted a proposal to end the conflict, according to a report last week by Axios, that includes the unprecedented requirement for the Lebanese government to recognise Israel. Experts in Lebanon have greeted the proposal with little optimism. “For Lebanon we must act,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a recent statement on X . “Everything must be done to prevent this country, so close to France, from once again being drawn into war.” The scale of destruction since the war resumed in an already war-battered country is driving France’s urgent diplomatic efforts. After Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel on 2 March in response to the assassination of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Israeli strikes have pummelled much of the country. Hezbollah had largely held to the November 2024 ceasefire that ended the previous war, despite near-daily Israeli violations, and the rocket fire marked only its second breach.
Israeli attacks have killed over 1,000 people , including 121 children, since the fighting resumed in early March. More than 1 million have been forced from their homes, in scenes of mass displacement that are painfully familiar to the last war in 2024. As Israeli ground troops battle Hezbollah in an attempt to push deeper into south Lebanon, senior officials in Jerusalem are talking openly about seizing the entire area south of the Litani River , some 30km north of Israel’s border.
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister, has called for the Israeli annexation of south Lebanon, saying that “the new Israeli border must be the Litani.” His comments drew global condemnation and fear in Lebanon of a prolonged Israeli occupation. It is against this backdrop that France is seeking to intervene. While France has a deep-rooted, historical and political relationship with Lebanon, it has seen the influence it wields in its former protectorate decline over the past two decades.
The US, Israel and Iran will ultimately dictate the trajectory of the war, but France has, nevertheless, sought to seize the initiative and restore its role as Lebanon’s protector. The French foreign ministry has denied that any such plan exists, saying that Paris is merely seeking to support Lebanon by hosting direct talks with Israel. However, analysts say France is unlikely to want the exposure of a thus-far private proposal at a time when mediation between the warring parties remains so remote. France’s plan for peace The framework builds on the structures of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that shaped both the 2006 ceasefire and the November 2024 cessation of hostilities, but goes further. As per the 2024 ceasefire, it calls for the Lebanese Armed Forces to redeploy south of the Litani River, and for Israel to withdraw from the five hilltop positions it has held since the last truce. UNIFIL would verify Hezbollah's disarmament in the south, while a broader UN-mandated coalition would oversee it across the rest of the country. A non-aggression agreement would be signed within two months, formally ending the state of war between the two countries that has persisted since 1948. Diplomats would then work toward demarcating the Lebanon-Israel, and Lebanon-Syria, borders before the end of 2026. But the recognition element of the proposal is politically volatile inside Lebanon, where a majority of the public are opposed to normalisation and where it is currently illegal under Lebanese law for citizens to conduct any dealings with Israelis. Lebanon’s fragile sectarian balance makes the issue especially sensitive: many among the Shia communities, still broadly aligned with Hezbollah despite the group's military weakening, would view normalisation as a betrayal.
The Lebanese and Israeli governments have responded to the notion of normalisation in ways that reveal how far apart they remain, and, respectively, how much one risks losing while the other stands to gain. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar welcomed the idea, writing on X last week that “Israel has an interest in Lebanon joining the circle of normalization and peace in the region.” Lebanon's prime minister, Nawaf Salam, has said that his country is “far from” normalisation or economic relations with Israel, but is open to negotiating peace through direct talks. Karim Bitar, a Lebanese political analyst, acknowledges the difficulty of the moment but argues the recognition demand is less unprecedented than it appears. “Even Hezbollah has already de facto recognised the State of Israel when they entered into the maritime border delimitations negotiations,” Bitar told The New Arab, referring to the 2022 agreement that settled a long-running dispute over offshore gas fields between the two countries.
“It's not something that would appear as far-fetched as some would have us believe,” he added. A deal too far The risk for the Lebanese government, which recently banned Hezbollah’s military activities and is attempting to disarm the group, is that any move toward recognition could revive Hezbollah's narrative of armed resistance at precisely the moment it is at its most weakened and politically isolated.
And as the costs of war increase, the prospect of persuading a war-weary Lebanese public to accept recognition of the country currently bombing them grows ever more remote.
“Once Lebanon has been hit even harder, its infrastructure has been destroyed, hundreds of civilians die, it will become much more difficult for Lebanese public opinion, and particularly the Shiite community, to accept this idea of recognition of Israel,” Bitar said. France's official denial of the proposal reflects a harder reality. Paris understands that neither Israel nor Hezbollah is yet ready to negotiate. Israel, for now, will seek further military gains before entertaining any talks, and Hezbollah has vowed to fight on. The broader architecture of the proposal also raises questions. The Lebanese army’s redeployment, Israel’s full withdrawal, and Hezbollah’s disarmament are not new demands. They were central to the November 2024 ceasefire, which both Israel and Hezbollah failed to fully implement.
“The French move was more a tentative initiative, or a set of ideas, than a plan as such, and it quickly turned out to be stillborn,” Joseph Bahout, director of the American University of Beirut’s Issam Fares Institute and a former consultant with the French foreign ministry, told The New Arab. “If Lebanon's authorities could not deliver this result for more than a year and under a truce, how would it deliver it in almost a month or two under war and fire?”
The political obstacles do not end there. For the proposal to gain traction, Bitar argues, France would need to assemble a coalition that stretches well beyond its usual European partners. This could include countries of the Global South with a stake in regional stability – China among them – who have no interest in seeing Lebanon and the wider region further fragmented.
France’s plan depends, above all, on American leadership that is not currently on offer. Lebanese and Israeli officials have both said, in different ways, that no deal will hold without Washington behind it. It remains unclear who inside the Trump administration is even leading the Lebanon file.
“It was clear that neither Israel, nor specifically Washington, wanted to grant France such a preeminent role in a dynamic they now consider totally their own: a dynamic that gives military gains priority and precedence over any premature negotiated solution,” Bahout said.
For now, a negotiated settlement remains distant. The French proposal, for all its ambition, has been denied by its authors and quietly rebuffed by the parties with the most power to make it work. The social and political barriers inside Lebanon to recognition of Israel are formidable enough in peacetime. Under bombardment, with Israeli ministers threatening to redraw the border, they will prove insurmountable. Alex Martin Astley is a freelance journalist based in Beirut, covering conflict, foreign policy, and social justice issues Follow him on X: @AlexMAstley