Last week, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) said they had successfully disarmed Hezbollah in the southern part of the country, covering the area south of the Litani River. That disarmament was first listed as a condition of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which has been in force since 2006 and was re-affirmed in the 2024 ceasefire agreement between Lebanon and Israel.
But Israel doesn’t believe Lebanon’s claims and says Hezbollah is rearming faster than it is disarming. That has left Lebanon once again on tenterhooks, as Israel insists on Hezbollah’s nationwide disarmament and international lenders hold back funds from Lebanon until that condition is fulfilled.
Lebanon is contemplating two unpleasant scenarios: trying to disarm Hezbollah forcibly, potentially triggering unrest and rioting, or a full-fledged Israeli invasion to eliminate Hezbollah’s weapons across the country.
“The Lebanese authorities don’t want a military clash with Hezbollah, but trying to avoid the possibility of a domestic clash is paving the ground for Israeli action,” said Sami Nader, a Lebanese political analyst.
The Israel Defense Forces have carried out near-daily strikes on the country, killing more than 300 people, since a cessation of hostilities agreement was inked in November 2024. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has documented 10,000 Israeli violations. Lebanon accuses Israel of not fulfilling its part of the deal—neither fully stopping the bombing nor withdrawing from five strategic locations it occupied.
Yet, for the first time in their troubled history, Israelis and many in Lebanon are on the same side. Both are desperate to get rid of Hezbollah’s arsenal and the Lebanese perhaps even more than the Israelis.
Israel has long sought to eliminate the threat that Hezbollah presents to its security. However, that threat has subsided since Israel assassinated charismatic Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and decimated the group’s capabilities in repeated strikes. Inside Lebanon, Hezbollah’s grip over economic, political, and social life remains tight. Even though the group may no longer have the capability to defeat Israel in an armed conflict, it still has enough arms to control Lebanon and threaten violence were the Lebanese to mount a challenge.
Some in Lebanon now secretly hope that if the LAF can’t disarm Hezbollah, perhaps Israel will.
In 2023, as Hezbollah and Israel exchanged fire, Lebanese institutions and a majority of people, excluding perhaps Hezbollah’s core supporters among the Shiite community, made clear that it wasn’t their fight. The cease-fire came into place after more than a million people in southern Lebanon, a Hezbollah bastion, had been forced to flee from Israeli bombings.
As a result, Hezbollah agreed to cede ground and retreat. But Israel says the group is busy rebuilding and the Lebanese army is still reluctant to enter homes and buildings where Hezbollah has hidden its arsenal.
“Where is the proof that the Lebanese army has disarmed Hezbollah in the south?” asked Sarit Zehavi, the founder and president of Alma, a research center specializing in Israel’s security challenges on its northern border. “Did they show a map? Which town and how many houses did they raid? Did they give any proof of the type of weapons they found?
“The trouble is that disarming Hezbollah is a systematic project. If they [the LAF] publish one video of a tunnel, one picture of a rocket, this isn’t systematic.”
Eran Lerman, a former Israeli deputy national security advisor and the vice president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS), said that according to Israeli intelligence, Lebanese efforts to disarm Hezbollah are “purely cosmetic” and there are signs that the group has started to rebuild.
According to a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) last month, Israel’s repeated attacks on reconstruction-related equipment such as bulldozers and excavators, which are needed to remove rubble, and cement factories, needed to rebuild the homes of many of the residents in southern Lebanon who were forced to leave, “violate the laws of war and are apparent war crimes.”
While HRW said it didn’t find any evidence of their use for military purposes by Hezbollah, Alma’s Zehavi admitted that attacks on reconstruction equipment and facilities were intended to “make sure Hezbollah cannot rebuild its tunnels, its launching positions, and its weapons storage facilities.”
Israelis are aware that even if Hezbollah withdraws its weapons, its presence in the region will continue. Most Shiite families in the region have a Hezbollah member or supporter. In order to keep Hezbollah out, Israel might prefer bombed-out, uninhabitable villages.
Even as the disagreement over Hezbollah’s disarmament south of the Litani continues, the Lebanese government says it is ready to usher in phase two—to confiscate weapons north of the Litani. Both Israel and Lebanon believe it will be a much more difficult undertaking, since Hezbollah says it never agreed to abandon its project in the rest of the country.
In a recent televised speechHezbollah leader Naim Qassem indicated that was out of the question. “This would mean taking away the power of the resistance,” he said.
The cease-fire agreement was indeed vague and did not specify Hezbollah’s complete disarmament. Last August, as U.S. pressure grew, Lebanon’s government adopted what’s believed to be a U.S.-dictated road map to disarm the group fully.
“Hezbollah has no choice—either it gives up its weapons or Israelis are coming for them,” said a Sunni notable who spoke on the condition of anonymity. He said he didn’t think Israel would hit Sunni- or Christian- or Druze-dominated neighborhoods but would only target Hezbollah strongholds in the rest of the country.
“We didn’t start the war with Israel—Hezbollah did. And we will not fight for Hezbollah. They killed Hariri. We don’t give a shit about them,” he said, referring to former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a Sunni.
Lerman of JISS said Israel was aware of opposition to Hezbollah but was gobsmacked at the extent of desperation within Lebanon to get rid of the group’s arsenal.
“Many in Lebanon right now wish, openly wish, for Israel to do their work for them. They are saying, ‘Don’t attack the Lebanese institutions, only Hezbollah.’ They are saying that openly, almost like, ‘Go ahead and hit my cousin, not me,’” he said.
A countrywide Israeli invasion would require going home to home to find and confiscate Hezbollah stockpiles. But Israeli strategists don’t see it as necessary to wage a full-fledged war if they can keep hitting Hezbollah depots when and where they want.
Lerman anticipated a more intense Israeli bombing campaign to push Hezbollah farther away from the Litani, at least up to the Awali River, about 25 miles away. The argument is that an intense Israeli air bombing campaign may weaken the group further and provide the LAF with the momentum they need.
Although Lerman admitted that in election year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have other considerations.
“The question is if it is politically profitable, useful, for the present Israeli government to launch a major, all-out operation” in an election year, Lerman said. “The Lebanese live under the impression it may happen.”
Nader, the Lebanese political analyst, said the key question is what happens in Iran as protests engulf the country and once again Iranians call for a change in leadership. Hezbollah’s weapons in Lebanon are Iran’s greatest bargaining chip, Nader added, which it likely intends to use in its own nuclear deal with the United States. “Iran wants to make a deal, if the price is right.”
