When Lebanese and Israeli envoys signed a US-brokered framework agreement in Washington on June 26, they turned months of cautious, indirect contacts into a formal diplomatic process — the most significant opening between the two states since 1983.

For President Joseph Aoun, who called the deal "a first step" toward restoring sovereignty, it was a vindication of his central wager: that direct negotiation, not resistance, offers Lebanon its only route out of a ruinous war.

The text itself reads as a Lebanese diplomatic gain, at least on paper. The 14-point agreement records that Israel has no claim to Lebanese territory and envisions the Lebanese Armed Forces eventually assuming authority across the south.

But the decisive clause is conditional: that authority is contingent on the "verified disarmament" of non-state armed groups — which means Hezbollah. Point nine commits Beirut to a performance-based program to build up the army's capacity to assert control and disarm those groups. What the deal conspicuously lacks is a binding timetable for the corresponding Israeli withdrawal.

That asymmetry is at the heart of the negotiations. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said within a day of signing that troops would remain in Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has framed the objective throughout as the "dismantling of Hezbollah's weapons."

Lebanon, in other words, has accepted a sequence in which it must deliver a domestically explosive concession first, with Israel's exit resting on Israel's own judgment of whether that concession has been met. Karim Emile Bitar of Saint Joseph University likened the framework to the Oslo Accords, arguing it reflects a balance of power "decisively tilted in Israel's favour," with one side relinquishing leverage in exchange for recognition and no reciprocal obligations.

The regional backdrop that made the deal possible is also more fragile than it appears. A 14-point US–Iran memorandum signed on June 17 opened a 60-day window meant to wind down the wider war, and a renewed Israel–Hezbollah ceasefire followed. But neither Lebanon nor Hezbollah is party to that memorandum, and the truce has been repeatedly punctured by Israeli strikes in the south. Beirut's hope — that a broader de-escalation gives it leverage — sits atop an arrangement it does not control and cannot enforce.

Aoun's strategy is to convert a weak hand into a sovereign one. He has insisted that Lebanon alone owns its negotiating file, welcomed the US–Iran memorandum while stressing respect for the country's "particularity," and declined to tie the Israel track to other initiatives. In parallel, Beirut is courting Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Qatar for an Arab umbrella that might insulate its position from any future swing in US–Iran relations. Much still depends on Washington, and on whether the Trump administration — a signatory, and Israel's principal backer — will press Israel toward flexibility during implementation. Bitar, among others, doubts the US can act as a neutral arbiter when disputes arise.

The gravest test is internal. Hezbollah, excluded from the talks, rejected the framework almost immediately as a surrender and denied any link between its disarmament and an Israeli pullout; supporters filled the streets of Beirut's southern suburbs the day after the signing. Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, the group's ally and the state's habitual intermediary, had pressed for indirect talks all along. The army and government, analysts note, are unwilling to use force against Hezbollah — which leaves Aoun trying to expand state authority in the south without igniting the civil confrontation the whole enterprise is meant to avoid.

Public opinion offers him only ambiguous cover. A survey by Information International, published by Al-Jadeed and conducted in late April and early May among 2,000 respondents, found a majority favouring a peace agreement — but with attitudes split sharply along sectarian lines, Shia opinion overwhelmingly opposed. That is the fault line Aoun must now govern across.

The signing, then, is best read not as a settlement but as the start of the hardest phase. The framework has shifted the contest from the battlefield to the terrain of implementation, where Lebanon's formal gains meet the reality that the party expected to disarm was never at the table. Whether Aoun's roadmap survives that collision — or whether Lebanon again becomes the casualty of a bargain struck largely above its head — is what the coming weeks will decide.