Tension has overtaken Lebanon since the withdrawal of five Shia ministers from a cabinet session convened to discuss the Lebanese army’s plan to disarm Hizbullah.
The withdrawal of the five ministers — four of them belonging to Hizbullah and its ally, the Amal Movement — took place in the context of a delicate sectarian power-sharing system that extends to parliament, public offices, and key ministries, and has entered a critical stage in the standoff between Iran-backed Hizbullah and its rivals, who lean more towards the West and the Gulf.
Local media reported that the ministers’ withdrawal coincided with the arrival of Army Commander General Rudolf Heikal to present a plan for disarming Hizbullah. The official National News Agency reported on Friday that the ministers walked out of the meeting, without providing a reason for their withdrawal.
Under US pressure and in the wake of Israeli strikes, the Lebanese government had earlier instructed the army to draw up a plan to de-weaponise the armed group, once dominant in the country, by the end of the year.
Hizbullah and Amal ministers have so far boycotted cabinet discussions on disarmament three times. Lebanon’s sectarian system rests on an informal legitimacy derived from consensus-based power-sharing.
On Wednesday, Hizbullah reiterated its opposition to disarming, with its parliamentary bloc urging the Lebanese authorities to “retract their unpatriotic decision.”
The government insists that disarming Hizbullah is part of implementing the US-brokered ceasefire agreement reached in November 2024, which ended more than a year of hostilities between Hizbullah and Israel.
In an attempt to ease tensions, Parliament Speaker and Amal leader Nabih Berri called for the discussions to be conducted in a “calm and consensual dialogue.”
Ahead of the meeting, Fadi Makki, the only Shia minister unaffiliated with either Hizbullah or Amal, who also withdrew from the cabinet session, said “there are no details yet” regarding the army’s plan.
Before the session, posters were pasted across Beirut bearing images of Prime Minister Nawaf Sallam and President Joseph Aoun, reading: “We stand with you. One army, one weapon, one state. A new era for Lebanon.”
Israel signalled last week that it would scale back its military presence in Southern Lebanon if the Lebanese army took steps to disarm Hizbullah.
For years, Hizbullah held sway over Lebanon’s political life, repeatedly stalling government activity and presidential elections. But its grip appears to have weakened following the heavy losses it sustained during last year’s war with Israel, in which the Shia group became involved in supporting Hamas after the Israeli offensive on Gaza began on 7 October 2023.
During the conflict, Hizbullah lost its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah along with most of its senior military and political command as well as a significant portion of its arsenal.
A few weeks after the war ended, a coalition of hardline Syrian Sunni groups toppled the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, a Hizbullah ally, cutting off the group’s weapons supply route from Iran through Damascus.
In late November 2024, a US-brokered agreement between Hizbullah and Israel took effect, calling for a halt to hostilities that had dragged on for more than a year. Hizbullah dubbed the hostilities the “Battle of Mighty Ones,” while Israel referred to it as “Operation Northern Arrows.”
At the time, president Joe Biden announced the agreement, saying it aimed to bring a permanent end to hostilities. The deal was approved by Israel’s security cabinet and Hizbullah’s leadership, and welcomed by Lebanon’s caretaker government headed by Najib Mikati.
Now Hizbullah’s present leader, Naim Qassem, is accusing the Lebanese government of “handing the country over to Israel” by pressing for its disarmament. Qassem added that Hizbullah and the Amal Movement had postponed a previously planned protest to make room for discussion and adjustments “before we reach a confrontation that no one wants. If disarmament is imposed on us, we will confront it,” Qassem warned.
In late August, Sallam stated that “the path towards monopolising arms, asserting the authority of the state, and reserving the decisions of war and peace for the state alone has begun, and there is no turning back.”
Lebanon now appears to have few options, with widespread fears of escalation – be it in the form of street protests or worse: civil war, limited clashes, or turning into the arena of a wider regional war.
In the meantime, the government has little choice but to postpone discussion of the plan and rally its supporters — Sunnis as well as large segments of Christians and Druze — to the streets.
Yet street mobilisation could quickly spiral into clashes that the army and security forces might have difficulty containing, threatening to unravel the civil peace that Lebanon’s armed forces have safeguarded since the end of the Civil War in 1990.
The Lebanese army itself fractured along sectarian lines during the Civil War, from 1975 to 1990. But since its reconstruction after the end of that conflict, it has been widely regarded as the guarantor of national stability.
Many observers in Lebanon believe that implementing the army’s plan within 120 days — by year’s end — is unrealistic, given the sheer scale of Hizbullah’s arsenal and its dispersal across multiple regions. This also creates sensitivities the army would need to manage carefully to avoid sparking an escalation.
The army will also need to balance what Lebanese media describe as three dimensions: geographical (targeting the most critical areas for weapons collection), qualitative (addressing weapons by level of sophistication, from ballistic missiles and drones down to medium machine guns), and multiplicity (considering Hizbullah’s arsenal alongside that of other, albeit far less significant, armed groups).
The Beirut-based anti-Hizbullah press argues that the group has not cooperated with either the army or the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, noting that patrols have uncovered weapons depots and fortified positions not declared by Hizbullah.
So far, the army controls all areas south of the Litani River, except for five points still occupied by Israel: Labouneh, Jabal Al-Ballat, Jabal Al-Deir (Aytaroun), Markaba, and Al-Hammams. Israeli forces have also established buffer zones in Kafr Kila and Al-Dhahira.
This runs counter to Israel’s commitments under the November 2024 agreement, which required a full withdrawal from Lebanese territory by 26 January 2025.
That deadline passed without compliance, casting serious doubt on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge to refrain from aggression against Lebanon — even if Hizbullah were to surrender its weapons. The situation, observers note, demands concrete international and US guarantees.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 11 September, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
Short link: