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3. Buffer Zones and Broken Red Lines: Israel’s New Security Architecture in Syria and Lebanon

For decades, Israel and Lebanon have lived under a paradox: perpetual hostility punctuated by temporary ceasefires. The 1949 Armistice created quiet without peace until the Lebanese state allowed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to operate from its south in 1969. That decision transformed southern Lebanon into a launchpad for attacks on Israel and invited successive wars – the invasions of 1978 and 1982, the campaigns of 1996 and 2006, and the near-daily Hezbollah–Israel clashes from October 2023 until Israel’s decapitation strikes in September 2024.

Each conflict ended with a familiar refrain: an international ceasefire, promises of restraint and UN oversight. Yet every agreement failed to hold, not because the terms were unclear but because the Lebanese state lacked the power – or the will – to enforce its sovereignty against non-state actors. Hezbollah, much like the PLO before it, coerced Beirut into complicity, violating UN resolutions and provoking Israeli retaliation. But why did UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) fall short?

Created in 1978, UNIFIL was meant to prevent exactly this cycle. But its vague mandate and the political biases of contributing countries left it toothless. It could monitor but not enforce; observe violations, but not prevent them. UN Resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1701 (2006) called explicitly for Hezbollah’s disarmament south of the Litani River, yet no Lebanese government dared to act. International actors looked the other way when violations suited their interests.

By September 2024, Israel had shifted the equation: targeted killings of Hezbollah leaders, combined with massive military pressure, weakened the group, but did not erase it. What followed was an unstable calm, the old “no war, no peace” limbo.

Some analysts argue that Lebanon should follow the Korean model: a demilitarized zone (DMZ) stretching from the Damour River south to Israel. In theory, this would strip the south of all weapons except for police and army patrols, enforced with drones, cameras, sirens and minefields. In practice, it would eliminate the capacity of non-state actors to hijack Lebanon’s foreign policy and drag the country into wars.

But reality complicates the idea. Unlike the Korean Peninsula, Lebanon’s south is densely populated, socially fragmented and riddled with competing loyalties. Establishing a DMZ there would displace entire communities or force them under permanent surveillance. More realistically, the international community is now pushing for a “1701-plus” arrangement: limited withdrawals of heavy weapons, an expanded Lebanese Army presence, smart monitoring systems and gradual border demarcation.

Let’s look at Sweida’s new agreement. Could it be a regional mirror?

The events in Syria’s Sweida province in July 2025 provide a chilling parallel. After Assad’s fall in late 2024 and the rise of Ahmad al-Sharaa’s Islamist-led government, sectarian tensions in Sweida exploded into bloodshed. Over 1,100 were killed in Druze–Bedouin clashes, and Syrian army units were accused of massacres. Hundreds fled toward the Israeli border.

Israel, invoking its two red lines – a buffer zone and Druze protection – responded with airstrikes as far as Damascus. It armed local Druze militias (3,000 fighters), provided humanitarian corridors, and essentially imposed a de facto DMZ in southern Syria. By August and September 2025, US-mediated talks in Amman and Paris produced a “stability roadmap:” the Syrian withdrawal of heavy weapons, recognition of Sweida’s integration under Damascus and tacit Israeli freedom of action for strikes.

Critics in Syria called it capitulation, but for Israel it was strategic success: Druze protection, buffer enforcement and a precedent for regional security deals short of peace treaties.

What links Sweida and southern Lebanon is a clear Israeli doctrine: enforce red lines militarily, then backfill with US-brokered “security understandings.” Not treaties, not normalization, but arrangements. These agreements:

• Remove heavy weapons from border areas.
• Legitimize Israel’s right to strike if its red lines are crossed.
• Integrate international mediators (US, Jordan, France) as guarantors.
• Avoid symbolic concessions like sovereignty debates, focusing instead on practical security.

Sweida shows this doctrine at work. Lebanon may be next.

Lebanon’s south is exhausted. Communities there have borne the brunt of wars since 1969, often imposed by outsiders – first the PLO, then Syria, and finally Iran’s Hezbollah. Many southern Lebanese now want quiet, not ideology.

The Lebanese Army, under Commander, and now President, Joseph Aoun, represents the one institution trusted internally and internationally. If Lebanon is to accept a “1701-plus,” or even a light DMZ, it will almost certainly be Aoun’s army that enforces it, backed by US and French guarantees and international aid.

Here, the Sweida precedent matters: if Syria’s Islamist government had the choice of accepting a security roadmap with Israel under US mediation, Lebanon, more fragile, may have no alternative.

Could we see Joseph Aoun, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu standing together? A year ago, it would have seemed unthinkable. Yet after the Sweida arrangement, after US envoys Barrack and Ortagus brokered regional security talks, and after Israel’s successful decapitation campaign in Lebanon, such an image no longer feels impossible.

For Lebanon, the likely trajectory is:

• Short term (6–12 months): staged “1701-plus” withdrawals and expanded army deployments south.
• Medium term (1–3 years): quiet on the border, aid corridors and incremental land-border demarcation.
• Long term (3–5 years): a regional summit that may feature Trump, Netanyahu and Aoun presenting a Middle East security framework – not a peace treaty, but a mosaic of enforced red lines and limited cooperation.

If Sweida was the first domino, Lebanon may well be the second. And when it falls, the image of an American president, an Israeli prime minister and a Lebanese head of state standing side by side will no longer be unfathomable. It would mark not just the end of proxy wars but the beginning of an era where peace with Israel could become the foundation of a tightly managed Middle East order.