‘One Day We Will Drive From Jerusalem To Beirut’: Huckabee Says Lebanon Deal Marks Historic Shift
By Gabriel Colodro / The Media Line
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said Tuesday at the Herzliya Conference that last week’s US-brokered framework between Israel and Lebanon should be understood first as a shift in how both countries define the threat on their shared border: not as a war between Israel and Lebanon, but as a conflict centered on Hezbollah.
Speaking in Herzliya days after Israel and Lebanon signed the Washington framework, Huckabee said the agreement’s most important achievement was not ceremonial. It was, he said, the Lebanese side’s acknowledgment that Israel itself is not Lebanon’s enemy.
“Israel already knew that it was not at war with Lebanon,” Huckabee said. “Lebanon has a problem with Hezbollah, not Israel. Israel has a problem with Hezbollah, not with Lebanon.”
The agreement, reached after US-mediated talks in Washington, links a phased Israeli withdrawal from parts of southern Lebanon to Hezbollah’s disarmament and the deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces in areas where the Iran-backed group has long operated. Israel and Lebanon have technically remained in a state of war since 1948, and Hezbollah has rejected any arrangement that makes its weapons a condition for Israeli withdrawal.
Huckabee said the talks unfolded over five meetings in Washington in recent months. At first, he said, the exchanges were formal and bound by protocol. Over time, the atmosphere changed.
He described one moment during a break when he saw an Israeli general and a Lebanese general speaking privately, smiling, and appearing at ease with one another.
“When I saw that, I realized I was watching something historic,” Huckabee said.
For Huckabee, that scene recalled an image previously offered by President Isaac Herzog: a future in which a person could leave Jerusalem by car and continue north to Beirut. Huckabee said he returned to that line during the talks, not as a prediction that such travel was imminent, but as a way to describe what normalization could eventually mean.
The ambassador cautioned that the agreement does not resolve the central challenge. Hezbollah’s disarmament and dismantling, he said, remain long-term tasks. The group’s military infrastructure in southern Lebanon has been a recurring source of conflict with Israel, including during the latest round of fighting, which left large parts of southern Lebanon damaged and many civilians displaced.
Huckabee also said one of the agreement’s most significant features was that Iran was kept outside the negotiations. Tehran has armed and funded Hezbollah for decades and has long used the group as a central part of its regional strategy.
“They have no role in it,” Huckabee said of Tehran. “They have no reason to stick their nose in it.”
Turning to the US-Israel alliance, Huckabee described recent military cooperation between the two countries as unprecedented. He said Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of US Central Command, told him that in his military career he had never seen a relationship like the one developed between the American and Israeli militaries.
Huckabee said cooperation during recent fighting was so close that American and Israeli personnel worked side by side in operations centers and were almost indistinguishable except for their uniforms.
“If you did not notice the patches on their sleeve, you would not realize which one is the Israeli and which one is the American,” he said.
He added that many details remain classified, but said future disclosures would show an extraordinary level of operational and intelligence coordination.
Huckabee also praised President Donald Trump’s record on Israel, citing the relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, US recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, efforts to return Israeli hostages, and the creation of the Board of Peace.
The ambassador closed by rejecting the idea that the alliance benefits only Israel. He said Americans also gain from Israeli intelligence, technology, agriculture, and innovation.
“It is not a one-way street,” Huckabee said. “Israel does a lot of things for America.”
The remarks reflected the administration’s effort to present the Lebanon framework as both a security arrangement and a possible opening for a wider diplomatic shift. Whether it becomes either will depend on the hardest question left unresolved: whether Lebanon can assert state authority in the south while Hezbollah refuses to surrender its arms.
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