- 1949, Fragile armistice -

The first Arab-Israeli war began on May 15, 1948, the day after the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel.

Five countries -- Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq -- had rejected a UN plan adopted in November 1947 to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states and went to war against the new state.

In 1949, Israel and neighbouring countries signed armistice agreements, but they collapsed with the start of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

- 1983, Unimplemented agreement -

Israel invaded Lebanon on June 6, 1982, in an operation it dubbed "Peace for Galilee" that was initially aimed at expelling Palestinian fighters but which resulted in a nearly 18-year Israeli occupation.

On May 17, 1983, Lebanon and Israel signed an agreement on the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon after four-and-a-half months of direct talks with US participation.

The deal was scrapped less than a year later, in March 1984, under pressure from Syria and its allies in Lebanon.

- 1991-93, Washington talks -

A series of bilateral negotiations between Israel and Syria, Lebanon, and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation was launched in late 1991, following the Madrid conference on Middle East peace.

Ten rounds of bilateral talks were held in Washington over 20 months until 1993, but failed to produce results.

- 2022, Maritime border deal -

After years of US mediation, Lebanon and Israel reached an agreement on October 27, 2022, which demarcated their maritime border and set the terms for sharing offshore gas resources in the eastern Mediterranean.

There was no direct contact between the two sides, with the deal formalised through separate exchanges of letters with the United States.

- 2024, Fragile ceasefire -

A November 2024 ceasefire sought to end more than a year of fresh hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, but Israeli forces kept up strikes in Lebanon, saying they aimed to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its capabilities.

In December 2025, civilian officials for the first time joined Lebanese and Israeli military representatives in ceasefire-monitoring meetings in southern Lebanon, led by the US and also involving France and the United Nations peacekeeping force.

The talks marked the first direct discussions between the two sides in decades.