Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Lebanon

The Lebanese Jewish community and the Maghen Abraham synagogue, the 1982 invasion and Sabra and Shatila, the occupation and the South Lebanon Army, Israeli espionage, the 2024 pager attack and war, the 2022 maritime deal, the 2025–26 talks, the 2026 security zone and settlement campaigns

Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Lebanon are dominated by war and occupation. The Guardian wrote in 2010 that the two neighbours had "been in a state of war for more than 60 years". "Israel" invaded in 1982, occupied a self-declared "security zone" in the south through its proxy, the South Lebanon Army, until May 2000, and has fought repeated wars with Hezbollah, most recently in 2023–24 and again from March 2026. A small Jewish community of between 70 and 100 people remains, nearly all of them in Beirut.

Jewish community and religious life

History

The World Jewish Congress says Jews have lived in Lebanon since ancient times. In the first half of the 20th century the community grew with immigrants from Greece and Turkey, and later from Syria and Iraq. Before 1976 there were two Jewish schools and two synagogues in Beirut, and a school in Sidon. The WJC says that nearly all the remaining Jews are in Beirut and cannot practise Judaism openly, and that a committee represents them. According to the Los Angeles Times, the community once numbered 22,000, and Judaism is still an officially recognised religion. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Adam Rasmi noted that, unlike most Arab states, Lebanon saw its Jewish community grow through most of the 1950s.

Jewish Community Council

The US State Department cites the Jewish Community Council's estimate of between 70 and 100 Jews. The government has again failed to approve the council's change of name from the Israelite Communal Council, and the Ministry of Interior has delayed verifying its 2020 election. The council has stopped importing religious material because of the ban on Israeli goods. A 2011 lawsuit over the Jewish cemetery in Tripoli is still pending. In 2014 the council was led by Isaac Arazi.

How far is it Zionist? No source reviewed links the Jewish Community Council to any Zionist body. Lebanon has a national ban on trade in Israeli goods, and the council stopped importing religious material because customs agents were wary of anything in Hebrew script. Hezbollah endorsed the synagogue restoration, and a spokesman said, "We have an issue with Israel's occupation of land", not with Jews.

Maghen Abraham synagogue

The Maghen Abraham synagogue in Wadi Abu Jamil, Beirut, was built in 1925. It was abandoned in 1976, a year after the civil war began. Foreign Affairs reports that in 1982 the Israel Defense Forces shelled the synagogue, leaving a hole in the roof. Restoration began in 2009. It was funded by private Jewish donors abroad, many of Lebanese descent, and by a $150,000 gift from Solidere. According to Foreign Affairs, the Lebanese Jewish diaspora, including the Safra family, led the fundraising.

Chabad

No Chabad emissary or centre was found in Lebanon.

Main article: Chabad-Lubavitch in West Asia

The Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States lists no rabbi for Lebanon.

Zionist movement and advocacy

No Zionist organisation operating openly in Lebanon was found. In 2010 President Michel Suleiman endorsed calls for the death penalty for anyone convicted of spying for "Israel" (see below). The closest Lebanese allies of the Zionist entity were the Christian militias it armed from 1976 and the South Lebanon Army (see below).

Israeli state and commercial ties

1982 invasion

In June 1982 "Israel" launched "Operation Peace for Galilee", an invasion first meant to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in southern Lebanon. According to the US Congressional Research Service (CRS), "Israel" then widened its aims to installing a Lebanese government willing to sign a peace treaty. Heavy casualties and criticism led it to withdraw from most of Lebanon in 1985.

Sabra and Shatila and the Kahan Commission

The Israeli commission of inquiry under Yitzhak Kahan found that the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila camps in September 1982 was carried out by a Phalangist unit, whose entry into the camps was known to "Israel". It found that no Israeli was directly responsible, but that "Israel" bore indirect responsibility because the IDF held the area. It found that the defence minister, Ariel Sharon, "bears personal responsibility", and recommended that he "draw the appropriate personal conclusions". If necessary, the prime minister should consider using his power to remove a minister under Section 21-A(a) of the Basic Law: the Government. The commission found the prime minister, Menachem Begin, responsible for not being more involved and aware. Citing IDF intelligence, it put the number of victims at between 700 and 800, and noted that the Red Cross counted 328 bodies.

Occupation and the South Lebanon Army, 1985–2000

After 1985 "Israel" occupied about 10% of Lebanon, a nine-mile-deep "security zone". According to the CRS, in 1985 "Israel" officially set up the South Lebanon Army (SLA) there as an allied militia "that it fully funded and equipped". The SLA grew out of Saad Haddad's "Free Lebanon" forces, made up of soldiers who broke away from the Lebanese army in 1978. Under General Antoine Lahad it had between 2,500 and 3,000 fighters. The IDF suffered about 250 deaths in the zone between 1985 and April 2000. Ehud Barak pledged in 1999 to withdraw within a year. "Israel" withdrew in May 2000, the SLA collapsed, and about 1,500 SLA members and their families, about 7,000 people in all, fled to "Israel". On 16 June 2000 the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, said the UN force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) had confirmed that "Israel has withdrawn from the country, in full compliance with Security Council resolution 425 (1978)".

Arms supplies

The SIPRI register records second-hand Israeli weapons, mostly given as aid, to two Lebanese clients. Militias that formed the Lebanese Forces (the Kataeb Regulatory Forces, the Tigers Militia and the Guardians of the Cedars) received 40 M-50 Super Sherman tanks in 1976, and in 1987 18 T-54 tanks, 18 BTR-60P armoured vehicles and 18 BS-3 100mm guns. The SLA received 35 M-50 tanks in 1976 and, between 1985 and 1996, M-113 and BTR-50 armoured vehicles, Tiran tanks, D-30, Model-50 and M-46 guns, and 20 M-66 160mm self-propelled mortars.

Espionage

In 2010 Lebanese security forces arrested Charbel Qazzi, a manager at the mobile network Alfa. Beirut media said he had worked for the Mossad for 15 years and that his information let "Israel" locate and kill people during the 2006 war. Hassan Nasrallah called for spies to be hanged. Al Jazeera reported that up to 70 suspected spies were arrested in 2009 and 2010. It said Qazzi confessed to handing network passwords to the Israelis and said the Mossad had first contacted him in the 1990s. No source reviewed documents a specific operation by Unit 8200 in Lebanon. Citizen Lab listed Lebanon among 45 countries with suspected infections by NSO Group's Pegasus spyware, linked to an operator it called KINGDOM, with a Saudi focus, and to one it called MIDDLE. In 2021 Citizen Lab reported that Microsoft had found at least 100 victims of spyware from the Israeli firm Candiru, in countries including Lebanon. The victims included human rights defenders, journalists, activists and politicians.

2024 pager attack

On 17 September 2024 pagers used by Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon. Al Jazeera reported that among the dead was a ten-year-old girl. Iranian media said the Iranian ambassador was injured. A similar attack on walkie-talkies followed. Lebanese officials said the two attacks killed 39 people and wounded more than 3,400. In November 2024 the office of Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that he had approved the pager operation.

2024 war and ceasefire

After nearly a year of cross-border fire that began after the 7 October 2023 attack, "Israel" stepped up its bombing in late September 2024 and invaded southern Lebanon. A ceasefire announced by "Israel", France and the United States took effect on 27 November 2024. Under its terms "Israel" was to withdraw its troops from the south over 60 days. Hezbollah fighters and weapons were to leave the area south of the Litani River, and the Lebanese army was to replace them. A week later the Lebanese health minister, Firass Abiad, said 4,047 people had been killed and 16,638 wounded. A US-chaired committee was set up to monitor the truce.

2022 maritime deal

In October 2022 Lebanon and "Israel" agreed a maritime border, brokered by the US energy envoy Amos Hochstein. The deal largely follows "Line 23". It gives "Israel" full rights to the Karish gas field and Lebanon full rights to the Qana prospect, but "Israel" gets a share of royalties from Qana through a side agreement with the Block 9 operator, Total. The London-based Energean began production at Karish.

Talks, 2025–26

On 3 December 2025 civilian envoys from Lebanon and "Israel" joined the US-chaired ceasefire committee in Naqoura. Al Jazeera described these as the first direct talks between the two countries in more than four decades. Lebanon named Simon Karam, a former ambassador to Washington, to sit alongside the US envoy Morgan Ortagus. The prime minister, Nawaf Salam, said the talks were not peace talks and that "normalisation is tied to a peace process". At that time "Israel" still kept troops in five areas of the south and kept up air strikes. The US Embassy named Uri Resnick as the Israeli civilian participant.

On 2 March 2026, during the US–Israeli war with Iran, Hezbollah began firing into northern "Israel", which led to large-scale Israeli operations. According to the CRS, a US-brokered "Trilateral Framework" of June 2026 involving "Israel" and Lebanon envisaged "the progressive redeployment of Israeli forces out of Lebanon 'pending the verified disarmament of non-state armed groups'". As of September 2026 "Israel" occupied about 5% of Lebanon. The operations reportedly displaced more than 1 million people, of whom about 360,000 were still displaced in August.

2026 security zone

Main article: Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon (2024–present)

On 24 March 2026 the defence minister, Israel Katz, said "Israel" would occupy southern Lebanon up to the Litani River. On 31 March he said that "all homes in villages near the border in Lebanon would be destroyed, according to the model of Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza", and that more than 600,000 displaced residents would not be allowed back south of the Litani until northern "Israel" was secure. On 20 October 2026 he wrote that "Israel has established a security zone inside Lebanese territory covering 700 square kilometers", and that "the area is now free of residents, armed infrastructure, and houses". Annahar reported him as saying that the army was ready to take further areas of Nabatieh and the Litani Basin, evacuate their residents and permanently annex them to the zone. Benjamin Netanyahu said in October 2026 that "as long as it remains armed, we will stay in this zone". The US-backed "Trump economic zone" and the 2026 "pilot zones" were proposed for the same area.

Trade and boycott

Lebanon bans Israeli goods. The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics country trade table does not list Lebanon.

Settlement campaigns and land

Calls to annex or settle southern Lebanon run from Chaim Weizmann's 1919 claim to the Litani valley and David Ben-Gurion's 1948 diary entry on a Christian state "with the Litani [River] as its southern border", to the 1982 essay of Oded Yinon; see Greater Israel.

The campaign Uri Tzafon, co-founded in 2024 by Anna Sloutskin, envisages Israel's northern border "extending to at least the Litani river". Sloutskin told AFP: "The idea is that most of the population flees, we move the border, and we do not let that population return." Daniella Weiss of Nachala said in June 2026 that all areas conquered in Lebanon, Gaza and Syria "must be dotted immediately with thriving Jewish" settlements. Among ministers, Bezalel Smotrich said in March 2026 that "the new Israeli border must be the Litani", and Itamar Ben-Gvir said in May that "Israel" had a "settlement plan for Lebanon". The US ambassador, Mike Huckabee, said in February 2026 that it "would be fine" if "Israel" took the biblical land from Egypt to the Euphrates.

In September 2026 the Lebanese cabinet approved a bill barring property sales in occupied areas; see Lebanese draft law banning property sales in occupied areas (2026). The Beirut daily Al-Akhbar reported claims about the banker Antoun Sehnaoui, chairman of SGBL, and about Solidere shares; see those pages.

Migration and aliyah

The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics records Lebanese-born immigrants to "Israel" as 235 in 1948–51, 846 in 1952–60, 2,208 in 1961–71, 564 in 1972–79, 179 in 1980–89, 87 in 1990–99 and 121 in 2000–2020. The World Jewish Congress gives a total of 4,062 Lebanese Jews who emigrated to "Israel" after 1948. Many went elsewhere: the Los Angeles Times put the diaspora that lives between Lebanon and other countries at 2,000. When the SLA collapsed in 2000, about 7,000 SLA members and family members fled to "Israel".

Political interference

According to the CRS, "Israel" widened its 1982 war aims to "installing a Lebanese government amenable to signing a peace treaty with Israel". The CRS writes that Israeli aims in 2026 may include pressing Lebanon's government and army "to marginalize Hezbollah".

Jeffrey Epstein

Emails from the summer of 2010 show Peter Mandelson encouraging Jeffrey Epstein to look at Lebanon's financial sector, describing it as a "growing market", and discussing a gala hosted by Lebanese banks in Washington; Epstein replied that "everyone says Beirut is amazing". In a separate thread on 31 July 2010, after the financier Tim Collins raised investment in Middle Eastern banks, Epstein described Lebanon and Syria as "the next two hot spots". The New Arab found no evidence that Epstein invested in Lebanon.

See also

• Chabad-Lubavitch in West Asia
• Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States
• Lebanese Foundation for Peace
• Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon (2024–present)
• Hezbollah
• Greater Israel
• The Yinon Plan - A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties
• Uri Tzafon
• Nachala
• Zionist movement
• Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Iran
• Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Jordan

External links

• UN Secretary-General statement on the Israeli withdrawal, 16 June 2000