New Delhi, July 20 -- WASHINGTON - Joseph Aoun arrived in Washington on Sunday carrying a proposal that neither Hezbollah nor Israel has agreed to, with a meeting with Donald Trump scheduled for Tuesday. The Lebanese president met Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the State Department on Sunday afternoon, marking the opening of a diplomatic week that represents the first Lebanese presidential visit to Washington since 2009 and the first real test of whether a US-brokered ceasefire deal can be made to function.

The 17-year gap between presidential visits says something about what Lebanon has been through. A decade of political paralysis ended in a presidential vacancy that lasted three years, concluded only when Aoun, a military commander...