"Only Lebanon": The One Deal Within Israel's Reach
A former Camp David participant explains what's possible — and what isn't — in the Middle East as Israel and the US each approach consequential elections.
When I spoke to Gidi Grinstein for an episode of The Spiro Circle, he surveyed the current diplomatic landscape in the Middle East: Gaza stuck, Iran out of reach, Israeli elections looming. But asked directly where any deal was possible, he said: “If you’re putting a podcast gun to my head — only Lebanon.”
I thought it was a powerful claim, especially from someone who spent seven years at the center of Middle East negotiations, and has spent years since thinking carefully about the region. It’s worth unpacking why Lebanon, specifically, and what a deal would actually mean.
Why Lebanon is different
The other active fronts carry structural barriers that Lebanon doesn’t. On Iran, Grinstein is blunt: there is currently no Zone of Possible Agreement — what negotiators call a “ZOPA” — between Israel and Tehran. Any deal will be a US-Iran arrangement made, in his words, “over Israel’s head.” Gaza is immobilized by the Palestinian Authority’s diminishing capacity and by the sequencing problem embedded in Trump’s own 20-point plan, which requires the PA to eventually govern Gaza without the institutional strength to do so.
Lebanon is different because the core dispute, the border, is technically resolvable. There are 13 contested points - fix them, and you produce a bilaterally agreed, internationally recognized border between Israel and Lebanon. “Every time that the state of Israel establishes a line which becomes a bilaterally agreed internationally recognized border, it is a monumental moment for Zionism,” he said.
The sequencing question
But a deal isn’t inevitable. Grinstein’s argument hinges on his reading that Israel is currently overloading the Lebanon talks with additional demands, which is why nothing is moving. But he believes the Americans will eventually strip the agenda back to the border alone. “The moment the Americans understand that, they will reverse and say, ‘let’s do a border deal’.”
