Lebanese factions have voiced their positions on disarming Hizbullah and confining arms to state authorities. The rhetoric was predictably sharp, containing more threats of escalation to a “civil war” than calls for calm.
Lebanon is now divided into several camps. The first is Hizbullah, led by its Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem, who warned of civil war should the government pursue what he described as “Israeli and American dictates.” The group has refused to disarm unless Israel withdraws from the south and halts its ongoing violations and attacks, despite the truce reached in November 2024.
In a televised interview, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun stated that the country faced “two options”: either accept the US “Objectives” paper delivered by Washington’s envoy Tom Barrack to Beirut and seek “Israel’s approval,” or reject it. In the latter case, he warned, “Israel will step up the pace of its attacks, Lebanon will become economically isolated, and none of us will be able to counter the attacks.”
The second camp consists mainly of Sunnis and Christians, the former represented by Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and the latter by Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea. Geagea accused Qassem of “threatening Lebanon, its government, and the parliamentary majority that supports it.”
A day later, Salam declared that “the state has regained the decision on war and peace,” stressing that the state’s monopoly on arms is the foundation of its authority, without which it cannot endure.
The third camp is the Amal Movement, led by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, Hizbullah’s partner in what is known in Lebanon as the “Shia Duo”. Berri refrained from commenting on Qassem’s statements, and his camp maintained a calm stance as he opened talks with Barrack over US guarantees concerning Hizbullah’s disarmament.
Hizbullah and Amal fought on opposing sides during the Lebanese Civil War, and both draw their legitimacy from Lebanon’s sizeable Shia community.
Berri’s meeting with Barrack, which lasted for over an hour, was attended by Deputy US Middle East Envoy Morgan Ortagus, in the presence of US Ambassador to Lebanon Lisa Johnson and the Parliament Speaker’s Media Adviser Ali Hamdan, reported the National News Agency.
The agency also stated that Berri asked the US envoy about Israel’s commitment to the ceasefire agreement and its withdrawal to Lebanon’s internationally recognised borders, noting, “this is the key to stability in Lebanon and an opportunity to begin reconstruction in preparation for the return of residents to their towns, in addition to securing the necessary support for the Lebanese army.”
In response, Barrack briefly commented: “We discussed what concerns everyone, how to achieve prosperity in Lebanon, in the south and north, throughout Lebanon, and for all Lebanese.” He concluded, “my meeting today with Speaker Berri was with a shrewd personality with an amazing history, and we are moving in the right direction.”
Since the 19th century, and with the spread of arms during the Mountain War between the Druze and Maronites in 1860, Lebanon has evolved into a sectarian armed state — open to all possibilities, whether peace or war, except the disarmament of its sectarian groups.
The weapons fuelled a brief Civil War in 1958, followed by a major conflict between 1975 and 1990 that claimed an estimated 150,000 lives.
The 1989 Taif Agreement, which brought the Civil War to an end, stipulated that all militias surrender their weapons to the state, except Hizbullah, whose arms were described at the time as the “weapons of resistance” against the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon.
After Israel’s withdrawal in May 2000, a legitimate question emerged: with the occupation over, why did Hizbullah continue to retain its arms?
The answer came swiftly, when the region was shaken by “Operation True Promise,” in which Hizbullah fighters kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, declaring the move as part of its commitment to securing the release of Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails.
Israel’s response was violent. Large swathes of Lebanon’s infrastructure were destroyed by heavy bombardment, and countless civilian casualties were reported. Yet, despite the scale of destruction, Israeli forces failed to advance on the ground due to fierce resistance from Hizbullah.
Ultimately, Israel agreed to exchange Lebanese prisoners for the bodies of the two captured soldiers. In the aftermath of the war, Hizbullah issued backtracking statements, acknowledging, “if we had known that the rules of engagement [with Israel] had changed, we would not have carried out Operation True Promise.”
Many observers argue that Israel’s response was predictable, but that Hizbullah was compelled to fight in order to justify retaining its weapons after the liberation. This is the same rationale its opponents cite for the decision to support Hamas following the 7 October operation. This time, however, Hizbullah’s losses were incomparable to any of its previous confrontations with Israel.
In 2024, Hizbullah’s charismatic secretary general Hassan Nasrallah was killed after leading the Iranian-backed Shia movement for three decades. The year also saw the group lose nearly all of its senior military leaders and a substantial portion of its missile arsenal. The lives and livelihoods of its support base in Southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs were also severely impacted.
Hizbullah immediately accepted a US-brokered truce with Israel, despite earlier declarations by its leaders that they would not halt hostilities until the Israeli assault on Gaza ceased. Among the provisions of the truce agreement between Lebanon and Israel was the stipulation that weapons should be restricted to legitimate Lebanese forces, alongside Israel’s withdrawal from the areas it had entered during the conflict. Yet Israel retains control over five strategic high points and continues to carry out near-daily strikes.
Subsequently, the Lebanese parliament convened and elected Aoun as president — an election Hizbullah had obstructed for nearly two years. Aoun in turn tasked Salam, a Lebanese judge at the International Court of Justice and a political opponent of Hizbullah, with forming a new government to replace that of billionaire Najib Mikati, who is an ally of the Shia Duo.
Until recently, Hizbullah was the most powerful political and military force in Lebanon, bolstered by strong support from Damascus and Tehran. That reality shifted with the formation of the current government earlier this year, as the balance of power turned against the party and Hizbullah emerged from the war weakened.
By the end of 2024, the regime of Bashar Al-Assad, one of Hizbullah’s key allies, collapsed in Syria. Then, in June, Tehran suffered a major setback following a 12-day war with Israel.
At present, Lebanon faces three options, each fraught with complexity. The first is Civil War, a threat its leaders brandish against one another. Yet such a conflict would almost certainly amount to a devastating loss not only for all Lebanese, but also for the regional powers tempted to intervene.
This war could not unfold without Syrian involvement against Hizbullah, which in turn would draw in Turkey, a key ally of the new regime in Damascus led by President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, the former leader of an Al-Qaeda affiliate. Such an escalation would ignite a Syrian conflict encompassing all the “components of the Levant”: the Alawites along the coast, the Druze south of Damascus, the Lebanese Shias in the south, and the Kurds in the north. Under those circumstances, Al-Sharaa’s regime will prove unsustainable.
A civil war would also spell the exhaustion of the Lebanese Sunni community, whose numbers are smaller than those of the Shias, while Christians would be divided between supporters and opponents of Al-Sharaa. For the Shia camp, the price would be catastrophic: the complete dismantling of Hizbullah’s social, economic, and institutional network, built over more than four decades. Even its allies in the Amal Movement could turn away if they judged the war un-winnable. The resulting rupture could spread across all sects in both Lebanon and Syria, spelling a darker scenario than what is unfolding at present.
The alternative scenario would involve Lebanese of all sectarian backgrounds engaging in broad negotiations on the monopoly of arms by the state, paired with international guarantees that Israel would refrain from future attacks, and assurances to the Shia community that it would not be targeted once Hizbullah relinquishes its weapons. This is, in fact, the prospect most feared by the leaders of the “Islamic Resistance,” as Hizbullah refers to itself.
Yet such negotiations cannot endure without firm US guarantees, as Washington remains the only power capable of restraining Israeli aggression. On Monday, Barrack arrived in Beirut to meet with Lebanese leaders over the implementation of the “Objectives” paper approved by the Lebanese government.
Barrack described the government’s acceptance of the plan to disarm Hizbullah before the end of the year as “the first step,” saying that Israel must now take a parallel measure within the framework of the ceasefire.
Following the meeting between Barrack, Ortagus, and Aoun, the former said, “I think the Lebanese government has done its part. They’ve taken the first step. Now what we need is Israel to comply.”
The “Objectives” paper contains details about the process of dismantling Hizbullah’s military arsenal, beginning with a halt to the movement and transfer of weapons on the ground, followed by the deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces in areas under Hizbullah’s control, and the reinforcement of border control. The paper also stipulates Israel’s withdrawal from the five high points, to be followed by border demarcation between Lebanon and Israel and between Lebanon and Syria. A subsequent stage would consolidate those steps within a diplomatic framework to support Lebanon’s reconstruction.
The paper also provides for American and French guarantees once Lebanon implements the “Objectives” terms.
Still, the negotiations may move forward under a middle scenario: the resignation of Shia ministers, accompanied by unrest and demonstrations on both sides of Lebanon’s divide, until all parties recognise that negotiations and guarantees are inescapable.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 21 August, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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