Lebanon is a tiny country of almost 6 million people, and it's always found itself being used as a proxy battleground between different states and actors around it. The Palestinian Liberation Organization set up camp there in the 1970s to fight Israel from Lebanese territory. The Syrians for years under the Assad regime had a strong military presence in Lebanon, described as a de facto occupation that finally ended in 2005. And of course, you have longstanding Iranian influence in Lebanon through Hezbollah, the Lebanese, Islamist Shia organization that is Iran's partner and proxy in the region. And whose massive arsenal of weapons has allowed it to operate essentially as a state within a state.

All of these different factors have caused instability throughout the years in Lebanon and successive Lebanese governments have struggled to maintain a monopoly over the use of force, or to really maintain full control over their own country.

After the October 7th attacks by Hamas on Israel in 2023, Hezbollah fired rockets into Northern Israel, and that started a renewed conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that's lasted until today. On April 16th, a ceasefire was brokered by the United States between Israel and Lebanon. Just a couple of days before that, the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors in Washington DC met for what was a historic meeting. Their second meeting in Washington is scheduled for April 23rd, and the ceasefire is meant to expire on April 26th.

Is this a moment where Lebanon could turn the page, or is it doomed to remain in endless cycles of conflict? Can it ever resolve the issue of Hezbollah's arms? Or is the state simply too weak? And what can countries do to support Lebanon?

I'm Jasmine El-Gamal, and this is the view from here where every week we take you behind the headlines and into the lives of the people living them.

To unpack all these questions this week, I spoke to Faysal Itani, a risk analyst and a Middle East expert at the Middle East Policy Council and a professor of security studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.