Barrack calling Lebanese reporters “animalistic” sparked widespread outrage and dominated headlines for days. Yet it wasn’t the only eyebrow-raising episode of the trip.
In true Donald Trump-era fashion, the proposal reflected a basic miscalculation: that deeply rooted political grievances can be dealt with through financial means.
The plan would see state-run factories established in the area, physically separated from Israeli communities across the border. Some Lebanese media reports have said that recent Israeli military incursions along the frontier may be intended to lay the groundwork for this “industrial buffer zone”.
Tom Barrack, a private equity property investor and friend of Trump’s, is now a special US envoy (Photo: Lebanese Presidency Handout/Anadolu via Getty)
The proposal would require displacing residents from 27 villages, and the deployment of US troops to police the zone, creating a de facto security corridor. Echoing the warped “Gaza Riviera” idea, it reflects the same Trumpian mindset toward Arab populations.
For one thing, Lebanon’s authorities and the population at large will not accept any arrangement that involves ceding sovereignty over a large swath of territory. There is simply no political appetite in Lebanon for such a scheme.
This is unlikely to win Lebanese support or serve as a vehicle for normalisation, and at best reflects American wishful thinking: that better relations between Israel and Arab states can be engineered from above, regardless of local resistance.
Officials of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon with a peacekeeper during a tour in the village of Kfar Kila, near the border with Israel (Photo: Anwar Amro/AFP)
Hezbollah “considers Israel an enemy and it would immediately reject any notion that there can be some form of normalisation with Israel through an economic zone in southern Lebanon”, he added.
Sam Heller, a fellow at The Century Foundation, said he doubted that Barrack had thought through the proposal and dismissed the plan as a “half-baked” attempt to bribe Hezbollah into submission.
The path not taken
Another stumbling block is the US’s declining reputation as a trustworthy broker across the Arab world.
square PATRICK COCKBURN Thanks to Trump, Israel will now strike whoever it wants
Read More
And in southern Lebanon, the local population remains deeply scarred by the 2023-24 Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
“Even members of the pro-Western camp in Lebanon have difficulty trusting the United States. This is why I think that any discussion of any economic zone is widely premature,” he added.
“This is a policy that will lead nowhere, and I think it is misleading,” said Young.
The belief that peace can be imposed with Israel making zero compromises, and that the Arab world will accept normalisation on Israel’s terms alone, shows the US is in “a land of their own imagination,” he said — one that bears little resemblance to the Middle East as it is.
Hence then, the article about trump s amateurish lebanon plan exposes failing us diplomacy was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Trump’s amateurish Lebanon plan exposes failing US diplomacy )
Also on site :