In their defense (i do try to put myself in their shoes, sometimes), Lebanon is a tiny country, with not much natural resources and it's very much at the mercy of its neighbours (geographically speaking). Lebanon is dependent on foreign aid, investment and capital, to function. So I do realize that we can't really go around alienating the rich arab states (on which our economy relies in large part) and that we have to deal with Syria very carefully, because, well, no matter how badly they treat us, we still have to ship our goods through there, get a lot of our power through there, and so on (to cite a simple example). ----- Well. If anything like the last war would repeat itself the next year Lebanon can kiss goodbye to its chances to become a modern state since tourists and investors would decide that this stuff is now going to be an annual affair and would shun Lebanon for at least a decade. Its precisely to reassure them that Lebanon needs a treaty with Israel now. To show them that this problem is solved. No investor would take seriously a country that has such a neighbor as Israel , does nt have any treaty normalizing its relationships with it and plus has outsourced the defence of its borders to a fundamentalist militia with ties to Syria/Iran. This is simply too much to ask from any investor. In case Lebanon does nt want to alienate the arab countries it can settle for something less impressive than a full peace accord. Permanent ceasefire agreement , 1949 style, will do. I think all this has less to do with the arab countries and more to do with the lebanese themselves. The lebanese should simply decide what they want . Do they want to concentrate on developing their country and limit their role in the israeli arab conflict with verbal expressions of solidarity with the humanitarian plight of the palestinians? Or they want to keep their country on standy as a potential second front against Israel activated occasionally by Hezbollah on orders from Syria/Iran?