David Daoud

🇺🇸 Senior Fellow @FDD. J.D. in Int'l Law/Laws of Armed Conflict. Focused on the nexus of Israel, Hezbollah, and Lebanon. יהודי מהעדה הלבנונית.

[David Daoud @DavidADaoud]

"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." - Sherlock Holmes, A Scandal in Bohemia

[Al Arabiya English @AlArabiya_Eng]

🔴 BREAKING: Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun says Israel must not be given any excuses to postpone its withdrawal from the south

🔴 The agreement’s phases conclude with ending the state of hostility between Lebanon and Israel

🔴 The phases include the Lebanese army’s deployment across all areas up to international borders

[Al Arabiya English @AlArabiya_Eng]

🔴 BREAKING: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawwaf Salam says the army’s deployment in the south paves way to Israel’s withdrawal from the area

🔴 Salam says negotiations are the quickest way to end the war for the least of costs

🔴 Lebanon faced Israeli intransigence during negotiations, the PM also said

🔴 All parties must put Lebanon’s interest first, and those who refuse to do so “will bear the consequences alone,” he added

[Al Arabiya English @AlArabiya_Eng]

🔴 BREAKING: A Hezbollah official says the group has told Lebanon’s government it rejects the proposed truce with Israel.

[Al Arabiya English @AlArabiya_Eng]

🔴 BREAKING: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam says the army will start deploying in “pilot zones” in the south.

[David Daoud @DavidADaoud]

@BrandstetterY @JacobALinker How does Hezbollah "leave Lebanon?"

[David Daoud @DavidADaoud]

IRGC: there will be no regional calm unless the Zionists withdraw from the occupied Lebanese lands

[وكالة تسنيم للأنباء @Tasnimarabic]

الحـ.رس الثـ.وري: لن يتحقق أي هدوء في المنطقة ما لم ينسحب الصهـ.اينة من الأراضي اللبنانية المحـ.تلة

[FDD @FDD]

Rather than doom Israel’s latest foray into Lebanon, Washington can leverage the IDF’s incremental gains to spur Beirut into action against Hezbollah, explains @DavidADaoud.

Read more here: https://t.co/tMyb4xfJLV

[Tony Badran @AcrossTheBay]

No. Lebanon is the problem.

[Jacob Ben-David Linker 🇺🇸🕎🇺🇸✡️🇺🇸🕎🇺🇸 @JacobALinker]

Israeli withdrawal conditioned on somebody else withdrawing?

Oh hey it’s May 17 1983 all over again.

[David Daoud @DavidADaoud]

Hezbollah’s evacuation from the South Litani Sector —

just like Hezbollah agreed to withdraw from the South Litani Sector after the November 27, 2024 ceasefire?

Just like LAF certified on January 8, 2026 that it had taken “effective control” over the South Litani Sector, i.e that Hezbollah was no longer present south of the Litani?

[Joseph Haboush @jhaboush]

Full joint statement between US, Lebanon, Israel after their fourth round talks in Washington:

[David Daoud @DavidADaoud]

@saul_roffe You’re getting so close, Saul — let’s just focus on Hezbollah. What are Hezbollah?

[David Daoud @DavidADaoud]

No it wasn’t.

This is a self-soothing narrative that’s entirely disconnected from Lebanon’s history or reality.

Lebanon was created with a fractured, Janus-faced identity. Its founding political order was a compromise holding together groups that wanted fundamentally different things — some of which hated each other, some of which hadn’t fully bought into the legitimacy of the concept of an “independent Lebanon.”

That compromise, however, was based on what was, at best, a transient demographic reality. At worst, a fiction. As demographics outpaced the order’s underpinnings, the PLO had entered the scene and took advantage of a volcano that lay dormant beneath the veneer of the “Paris of the Middle East” — which only lasted as long as the Lebanese were willing to play along with the fictions upon which their founding political order was based.

Once that crumbled — and it had already started to fracture in 1958, when President Eisenhower ordered the Marines to intervene and put Humpty Dumpty back together again — that led to the 1975-1990 civil war. During the civil war, Lebanese sided with foreigners against fellow Lebanese. The PLO benefited from it, but it didn’t make them do that — the frictions, frustrations, and hatred’s far predated the PLO (just look at the 1860 Druze-Maronite War, which re-erupted in 1983-1984)

The civil war then led to a subsequent reapportionment of power under Lebanon’s political order to more fairly reflect the country’s demographic realities. And now Hezbollah, which is both 100% Lebanese while being 100% loyal to Iran’s state-religious ideology, is benefiting from it.

[Joseph Haboush @jhaboush]

Full joint statement between US, Lebanon, Israel after their fourth round talks in Washington:

[Hiba Nasr @HibaNasr]

THE JOINT STATEMENT
🇺🇸 🇱🇧 🇮🇱

[David Daoud @DavidADaoud]

Lebanese delegation source says Lebanon has “obtained a total ceasefire”

[David Daoud @DavidADaoud]

@saul_roffe And “the Lebanese people” are victims of whom?

[David Daoud @DavidADaoud]

@saul_roffe You know what — I’ll bite: who are “the victims” here, Saul?

[David Daoud @DavidADaoud]

Instead Annahar reports the sides getting close to agreeing to a “trial zone” in south Lebanon, where the IDF would gradually withdraw, Lebanon would deploy LAF, and the US-chaired ceasefire “mechanism” would oversee violations, with that being extended gradually to other areas.

[David Daoud @DavidADaoud]

Annahar: Baabda sources had already said yesterday today’s round of Israel-Lebanon talks would not result in a joint statement https://t.co/d7oiyTGRA0

[David Daoud @DavidADaoud]

Israel-Lebanon talks in Washington end without a joint statement

[العربية عاجل @AlArabiya_Brk]

مراسلة العربية: انتهاء محادثات لبنان وإسرائيل في واشنطن دون بيان ختامي #العربية_عاجل

[David Daoud @DavidADaoud]

@saul_roffe Ok. Whatever helps you sleep at night.