The Cyprus Center for European and International Affairs
is inviting you to a lecture and a discussion entitled
Lebanon and Israel: Prospects for Peace
by
Ambassador Frederic Hof*
Thursday, January 22, 2026
18:00 – 19:30
Room: M114 Conference Room, Millennium Building (1st floor)
University of Nicosia
Chair: Euripides Evriviades, Ambassador (Ad Honorem), Senior Fellow of the Cyprus Center for European and International Affairs
Comments by Professor Andreas Theophanous, President of the Cyprus Center for European and International Affairs
Abstract
Israel and Lebanon have been in an official state of war since 1948, with periodic armed conflicts taking place since the late 1960s involving Israel and non-state actors operating on Lebanese territory. In November 2024 a ceasefire was announced, seemingly ending the latest such conflict: an armed confrontation between Israel and Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah. But the ceasefire has neither prevented ongoing Israeli air strikes on Hezbollah personnel and weapons sites nor ended the occupation of parts of southern Lebanon by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). This, even as the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) seek to establish security in southern Lebanese districts adjoining Israel and even as the Government of Lebanon (GOL) pursues the disarmament and demobilization of Hezbollah throughout Lebanon. Israel-Lebanon talks at the official, diplomatic level have begun, but is peace possible? What can be done to end over five decades of deadly, destructive violence and eventually bring these two neighbors to peace and normalization? For several months Ambassador Frederic C. Hof and a Canadian colleague have been shuttling between Lebanon and Israel on a Track II (unofficial) diplomatic project aimed at answering this question. Ambassador Hof will summarize what they have found.
RSVP by January 21, 2026 – 22841600, e-mail: cceia@unic.ac.cy
* Ambassador Frederic C. Hof was an Army officer (Vietnam veteran), diplomat, private sector CEO, think tank executive, and professor. He served as a military attaché in civil war Lebanon and later as the mediator between Syria and Israel from 2009-2011. He is the author of Reaching for the Heights: The Inside Story of a Secret Attempt to Reach a Syrian-Israeli Peace (U.S. Institute of Peace, 2022). Among his awards from the Departments of State and Defense is the Purple Heart.