The 3,000-Year History of Cooperation Between Lebanon and Israel

President Netanyahu meets with Evangelical leaders in Florida

WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES, January 6, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The American Mideast Coalition for Democracy supports the meeting between Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and evangelical Christian leaders in Florida on January 1 and seeks to expound on the ancient ties between Lebanon and Israel going back three-thousand years to the Tenth Century B.C. We also note Morgan Ortagus’ use of 1 Kings 5: 1-18 in her X profile and praise the understanding behind it.

This biblical passage details the cooperation between the king of Tyre, Hiram I, and King Solomon in the building of the temple in Jerusalem. Soloman’s father, King David, had famously fought and defeated the Philistines, which were a common enemy of the two kingdoms; and due to the receding power of both Egypt and Mesopotamia at this time, cooperation and trade between them flourished. Hiram initiated friendly relations with David by sending cedar timber from Lebanon, skilled carpenters, and stonemasons to construct David's palace in Jerusalem (2 Samuel 5:11; 1 Chronicles 14:1). This marked the beginning of diplomatic and economic ties which later deepened under Solomon.

As Col. Charbel Barakat writes: “The Bible recounts the exchanges and cooperation between Hiram and Solomon, which resulted in stability and great prosperity for the whole land. It appears the engineers who built the Temple were from Byblos, as its engineers were the most famous in Phoenicia. The timber, especially cedar and cypress, was cut from the mountains of Byblos, assembled into rafts, and sent by sea to near Jaffa, then transported to Jerusalem.”

Modern historians, drawing on the Hebrew Bible (1–2 Kings, 1–2 Chronicles) and references by ancient historians like Josephus (drawing on Tyrian records) and Menander of Ephesus, note that these accounts align with known Phoenician expansion and trade at that time as well as the strengthening of the kingdom of Israel.

“Solomon considerably expanded his army, and greatly expanded David’s commercial relations with the king of Phoenicia, Hiram of Tyre, effectively establishing a joint venture in which Hiram’s mariners (with a Jewish contingent in one of that extremely talented people’s few ventures into maritime activities) journeyed to Ophir and other exotic places in India or Africa, bringing back gold, silver, sandalwood, pearls, ivory, apes, and peacocks. Hiram handled the transport and Solomon the distribution.
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“In no previous era had the Middle East’s status of world crossroads been so diligently exploited, as commercial relations extended through much of the Mediterranean and Black and Red Seas, and East Africa and Arabia and India.”(1)

AMCD praises President Netanyahu’s vision for modern day Lebanon, which will most certainly flourish as a trading center once again once relations with its neighbor to the south are normalized and the threat to Israel from its soil, i.e., Hezbollah, is removed. Peace and trade are the answers to war and strife.

May the ancient past serve as inspiration for the future and may Lebanon flourish once more as a trading center at the “crossroads of the world.”

(1) Conrad Black, The Political and Strategic History of the World, Vol I: From Antiquity to the Caesars, 14 A.D., New English Review Press, 2023, p. 45.

Rebecca Bynum
The American Mideast Coalition for Democracy
+1 615-775-6801
rebecca@americanmideast.com
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