Israel invaded southern Lebanon and launched a massive bombing campaign on the country, Lebanese authorities are under increasing pressure to disarm Hezbollah. The United States and Israel have increasingly warned in recent weeks of a new war if Lebanon does not quickly seize all the weapons of the largest political and armed group in the country and an ally of the Iranian regime.
US envoy for Syria Tom Barrack, who is also leading negotiations with Lebanon, warned last month in a statement on X that Israel might act “unilaterally,” and that “the consequences would be serious.”
Despite the ceasefire signed last November, Israel has never stopped bombing Lebanon. It also carried out another series of air strikes on Lebanon last Thursday.
According to Israel, this is necessary to prevent Hezbollah from regrouping. But among the more than 400 Lebanese who have since been killed in Israeli attacks were according to the United Nations at least 108 citizens. The Israeli army also still occupies a number of ‘buffer zones’ in the south of Lebanon.
“The Lebanese government faces the choice of either confronting Hezbollah or Israel,” said David Wood, Lebanon analyst at International Crisis Group. In recent months, according to Wood, Lebanese leaders have tried to maintain some kind of balance.
The Lebanese government faces the choice of either confronting Hezbollah or Israel
The pressure on Beirut is also increasing because the US and the Gulf States are making their financial support for Lebanon conditional on the disarmament of Hezbollah. The country has been struggling with an economic crisis for years and now also has to pay for the expensive reconstruction of parts of the country that Israel has left in ruins.
Threatening violence
Although the Lebanese government army has started destroying the type of rockets with which Hezbollah previously targeted Israel, it is mainly focusing on the area below the Litani River in southern Lebanon. There has not yet been any disarmament in the entire country. “The government hoped not to provoke the group too much,” says Wood.
“Hezbollah may have been weakened by the war with Israel,” says Wood, “but the administration still fears that a serious attempt at total disarmament would be met with resistance and an outburst of violence.” The memory of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) is never far away, also because Hezbollah leader Naim Qasim emphasizes that the country could easily end up in a spiral of sectarian violence again.
A municipal worker was killed in an Israeli attack on the border town of Blida on October 30. According to Israel, its forces shot at a “suspect”.
Photo Mahmoud Zayyat/AFP
Hezbollah itself says it will only discuss disarmament if Israel withdraws completely from Lebanon and stops bombing. The group also believes that a ‘national dialogue’ must first take place – an idea that appears more often in Lebanese politics and, according to critics, is mainly used by Hezbollah to train disarmament.
Sovereignty
But neither Israelis nor Americans seem to care much about the political struggles of the Lebanese government. A repeat of last year’s violence, in which, according to the Lebanese authorities, more than four thousand people were killed by Israeli attacks, is therefore a real possibility.
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When Western diplomats talk about the future of Lebanon, a lot of it is about ‘sovereignty’: the state must regain its sovereignty by disarming Hezbollah. But a sovereign army that protects its own territory is not what the US and allies in Lebanon are aiming for, says Karim Makdisi, professor of international politics at the American University in Beirut.
After all, the army has been dependent for decades on financial flows, mainly from the US and some Gulf states. It is therefore not the intention that the Lebanese army will be able to defend itself against American ally Israel, says Makdisi.
“Since 2006, the US has been proposing an army modeled on the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank: an internal army that focuses on terrorism, drug and human trafficking along the Syrian border and domestic affairs such as disarming domestic groups. Such an army secures the borders on behalf of others, not on behalf of its own state. In essence, it would serve to defend Israel and to consolidate the American presence in the region.”
Barrack confirmed that view in an interview with the Emirati news outlet in September The National News: “Let’s go [het Libanese leger] arm it so it can fight Israel? I didn’t think so. You arm it so it can fight its own people. Hezbollah and Iran are our enemies.”
Hezbollah supporters on October 12 during a commemoration of their leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike a year earlier.
Photo Wael Hamzeh/EPA
Makdisi therefore believes that the disarmament of Hezbollah in the context of state formation and sovereignty of Lebanon is “at best silly, at worst malicious intent.” He points out that for many people, Israel’s daily violations of the ceasefire only justify Hezbollah’s refusal to fully disarm. “What sovereignty are we talking about when the US dictates agreements on behalf of Israel in which Lebanon essentially surrenders?”
Not all political leaders in Lebanon are against the American plan, analyst Wood emphasizes. Opponents of Hezbollah in particular see it as an opportunity to liberate the country from the grip of the militia. “Only many Lebanese feel that all obligations rest on them.”
Their fear is that the US will soon fail to put pressure on Israel to fulfill its part of the agreement: by withdrawing its troops and ceasing bombings, and by treating Lebanon as a sovereign country.
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