Lebanon has been at the centre of the upheaval Israel’s war on Gaza unleashed in the region since the Lebanese resistance movement, Hizbullah, stepped in to support the beleaguered Palestinians almost as soon as they were targeted. However, after sustaining debilitating losses, it was forced to accept a ceasefire on 27 November 2024.
Eleven days later, Hizbullah’s staunch ally, the Bashar Al-Assad regime in Damascus, fell to Western-backed Sunni Islamist forces hostile to the Lebanese movement for sectarian reasons and for its involvement in the Syrian Civil War in support of Assad. Some six months later, Israel attacked Iran, precipitating a 12-day conflict, which exposed perhaps as many Iranian weaknesses as strengths – the former making it more difficult for Tehran to support its ally in Lebanon. Hizbullah then suffered another political setback at home, when its opponents came to power and stepped up their campaign to neutralise the movement both militarily and politically, with support from Western and Arab powers.
However, Hizbullah has not been fully eliminated, nor are its Lebanese adversaries strong enough to confront it head on with a view to carrying through the plan to disarm it under the rubric of the state’s “exclusive monopoly on arms.” Hizbullah itself is keen to avoid an open confrontation at home. Meanwhile, Israeli military pressure continues through nearly daily violations of the ceasefire, which has only been observed by one side – Hizbullah – since it went into effect last year. Rather than pressuring Israel to meet its obligations, Washington has sustained constant diplomatic pressure on Beirut to buckle to additional demands.
“Lebanon is at a crossroads’ – it might sound hackneyed, but that is the reality,” said Rabha Seif Allam, a Lebanese affairs specialist at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly. “All possibilities are open to varying degrees. Everyone is worried, but some are hopeful.”
Israel has escalated its bombardment of Lebanon, ostensibly to accelerate the disarmament of Hizbullah – a condition that was never stipulated in the ceasefire agreement. Allam added: “Disarming Hizbullah cannot happen between now and the end of this year, nor in just a few months. It requires first and foremost a political consensus, as well as complex logistical preparation and strong economic support. Accelerating the push to disarm Hizbullah in the absence of the appropriate conditions – which require time to put into place – could precipitate a flareup in civil strife, which could spiral in unpredictable ways. Or it could lead to an intensification in Israeli strikes, which means a backslide into the war as it existed before the ceasefire.” In Allam’s view, the assassination of Hizbullah’s senior commander Haitham Ali Tabatabai on 23 November signalled that Israel may resume its assassination strikes, which it had stopped since the ceasefire.
Lebanon and Israel recently appointed civilians to what had previously been a military-only committee tasked with monitoring the US-brokered ceasefire. Simon Karam, a lawyer and former Lebanese ambassador to the United States, and Udi Reznick, deputy director for foreign policy at Israel’s National Security Council, joined the committee on 3 December. In addition to the Lebanese and Israeli participants, the committee is made up of representatives from the US, France, and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). Lebanon and Israel have no diplomatic relations, having officially been in a state of war since 1948. Nevertheless, Lebanon is committed to the Arab Peace Initiative, sponsored by the Saudi King Abdullah Al Saud and adopted by the Arab League Summit in 2002. The initiative calls for Arab diplomatic normalisation with Israel in exchange for the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state.
Then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon rejected the initiative out of hand and Netanyahu reiterated that rejection a decade-and-a-half later. Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam believes his country is “very far” from normalising relations with Israel, diplomatically or economically, despite the current negotiations aiming to reduce tensions. “I do not think that a peace agreement with Israel is on the Lebanese government agenda of either President Joseph Aoun or Prime Minister Nawaf Salam,” said Allam. “The foremost obstacle is Israel, which has not only failed to meet its end of the ceasefire conditions, but is also exploiting the current ceasefire to expand its control in Southern Lebanon.”
Still, Salam’s statements cannot conceal the lack of national consensus over disarming Hizbullah. “The most important issue facing Lebanon today is reaching a broad national consensus that will ensure that Beirut has the necessary relative manoeuvrability vis a vis Israel, on the one hand, and the regional situation on the other,” Allam said. In August, the government instructed the Lebanese army to draw up a plan to disarm all non-state actors, including Hizbullah, which possesses the largest armed force outside state control. The plan was given the name “Homeland Shield.” This is the part that requires the greatest consensus, but none exists, according to Allam.
“There is a general agreement over everything regarding the deployment of the Lebanese army south of the Litani River, but stripping Hizbullah of its arms is another matter. The withdrawal of Hizbullah’s forces from the south of the Litani is what Lebanon understood and agreed to in the ceasefire. But then, Israel, capitalising on Trump’s return to the White House, moved the goal post, upping its demands to include the complete disarmament of Hizbullah.”
Hizbullah and its supporters describe the plan as a “capitulation to US-Israeli dictates.” Salam and Aoun and their supporters argue that the monopoly on arms is the first condition of modern statehood. However, the subject remains deeply contentious. All the Shia ministers walked out of the cabinet meeting in September in which the plan was put to a vote. The plan emerged lacking a timeline and implementation mechanism, and Lebanon’s security environment remains extremely fragile. Israeli strikes have killed nearly four thousand Lebanese civilians, injured more than 15,000, and displaced more than a million. The majority of the casualties and displacements occurred between September 2024 and the ceasefire in late November.
Extensive bombing destroyed an estimated $3 billion in infrastructure. At least 100,000 housing units were partially or completely destroyed, most of them in the southern suburbs and the south of the country, where Hizbullah and Lebanon’s Shia community are concentrated. UNIFIL reports that Israel has violated the ceasefire more than 10,000 times since it went into effect last year, on the pretext of targeting Hizbullah members. According to estimates by the Lebanese Ministry of Health, 335 civilians were killed and around a thousand were injured by Israeli strikes in the past year.
While Hizbullah has withdrawn from all its positions south of the Litani, handing them over to the Lebanese army in accordance with the ceasefire agreement, Israel has not withdrawn from the additional Lebanese territory it occupied, claiming its need for “strategic positions.” While insisting on the need to bring the arms of non-state actors under government control in Lebanon, meanwhile, the Lebanese authorities have no interest in confronting Hizbullah.
As Prime Minister Salam put it, “we have lived through civil wars in this country, and I don’t think anyone wants to relive them.” Lebanon had only recently emerged from a two-year-long vacuum in the executive due to partisan deadlocks. The current government, headed by President Aoun and Prime Minister Salam, is still shaky and, according to Allam, continuity requires a broad consensus. She adds, “a lot of work needs to be done to avert a clash and to keep one street from being pitted against the other. This is why Beirut remains adamant on the full withdrawal of the Israeli occupation army from all Lebanese territory and an end to Israeli strikes in exchange for Hizbullah’s disarmament – a proposal Israel rejects.”
However, due to the potential dangers of attempting to impose the so-called Homeland Shield, Lebanese authorities had no other option but to enter into direct negotiations with Israel, according to the Paris-based Lebanese journalist Mohamed Abdulhamid. In fact, President Aoun said as much in November: “Lebanon has no choice.” Abdulhamid added: “The language of negotiations is more important than the language of war, and we have firsthand experience in that. An agreement with Israel is not one of the Lebanese authorities’ priorities, but direct negotiations is no longer optional.” Following the Taif Agreement, which ended the Lebanese Civil War in 1989, all political and sectarian armed groups handed over their weapons to the state.
An exception was made for Hizbullah, in exchange for its commitment to resist the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon. The resistance movement lived up to this commitment, fighting a ten-year war that ended with the Israeli withdrawal from the south in May 2000. But a new war erupted in July 2006, after Hizbullah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in order to secure the release of Lebanese prisoners in Israel. Lebanon suffered such losses during the 34-day conflict that Hizbullah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, in a televised interview after the war, said that had he been able to foresee what the abduction of the Israeli soldiers would lead to, Hizbullah would not have carried out that operation.
According to Abdulhamid, Hizbullah’s involvement in the Syrian Civil War in March 2011 on the side of Bashar Al-Assad against his Sunni Islamist opponents has not prevented it from continuing to support Hamas. But the organisation was weakened considerably as a result of its decision to open a second front to divert some of the Israeli focus from Gaza. Its long-serving charismatic secretary general Hassan Nasrallah was killed, as were most of its top military leaders and dozens of field commanders.
Its Shia base in its strongholds in the south and in Beirut’s southern suburb has been under severe economic strain due to bombardment, displacement, and destruction of homes and villages. In the end, the resistance movement was forced to accept the ceasefire, which was followed by the election of a Lebanese army commander, General Joseph Aoun, to the presidency, and the appointment of Nawaf Salam as prime minister, succeeding Hizbullah’s ally Najib Mikati.
With Assad replaced by a pro-US regime in Damascus, Hizbullah has little outside support left, apart from Iran. But Iran’s position since its engagement with Israel is difficult. “Iran does not want to lose Lebanon, especially after losing Syria,” Allam told the Weekly. “Iran’s stake in Lebanon is significant, but internal strife or a clash between factions would not serve Iran’s interests either.” Is Hizbullah weak? Yes. Is the new government in Beirut strong? No. A balance of weakness may help preserve the peace, but this is not the same as a balance of power. In weakness, despair and frustration can gain the upper hand, and drive situations to dangerous brinks. In Allam’s opinion, it is not in the interest of the new ruling authorities in Syria to meddle in Lebanese affairs. “They only want to dismantle the remnants of the political and security networks of the Assad regime. While this may affect figures close to Hizbullah, that would happen on Syrian soil, not in Lebanon.”
The dynamics of regional and international alliances remain a different matter. They present the more serious threat as rival powers might use Lebanon as a battleground to settle scores, as occurred during the 15-year Civil War. “This cannot be ruled out,” Abdulhamid said. “The Syrian-Turkish alliance, supported by some Arab states, may choose to intervene, both to disarm Hizbullah and to prevent the emergence of any strong opposition to the pro-alliance government.”
The Lebanese people do not want to see their country plunged back into civil war. They are not in the driver’s seat. Hizbullah’s rivals among both Sunni Muslim and Christian factions are chomping at the bit to destroy their adversary. Given the encouragement they receive from Arab and Western powers, they are unlikely to let this opportunity slip away despite its perilous implications. Abdulhamid observes: “Just as Syria was an arena for outside powers to score points against their adversaries, whether the players were Americans versus Russians or Arabs versus Iran, the same is likely to happen in Lebanon. These threads are all connected. So most likely the drive to implement the plan to secure a government monopoly on arms will lead to a clash.”
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