The Lebanese State Is Done With Hezbollah

Since the start of Israel’s most recent war with Lebanon, the Lebanese state has blamed Hezbollah for plunging the country into war at Iran’s behest. It now seems inclined to pursue a definitive solution to the problem. In initiating direct talks with Israel, Lebanon is hoping not only to end conflict with Israel but also to eliminate the threat Hezbollah wields inside the country.

The Lebanese president has not yet spoken to his Israeli counterpart, but ambassadorial-level talks in Washington last week were the first diplomatic contact between the hostile neighbors since 1983 and were hailed as historic—a small opening for lasting peace.

Lebanese and Israeli interests align to the extent that a strong Lebanese state—with a monopoly on arms—suits both. So far, both sides have managed to spin the start of a possible detente as a positive development for domestic audiences.

Netanyahu sold it as a success because he agreed to a cease-fire without withdrawing from occupied Lebanese territory. “I think Netanyahu agreed to a flexible set of parameters: stay within 8 [kilometers] to keep all our towns and villages in northern Israel out of Hezbollah’s range of fire and continue to strike Hezbollah elements bearing arms south of the Litani River,” said Eran Lerman, a former Israeli deputy national security advisor and retired intelligence colonel who now serves as the vice president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.

“But we agreed to a greater Lebanese initiative north of the Litani,” he added, referring to expectations that the Lebanese Army would disarm the group in the rest of the country. “Based on how that shapes up, we will gradually feel comfortable withdrawing from the south.”

On his end, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has suggested the talks as a step forward in regaining state control over policy. Lebanon is no longer “a pawn in anyone’s game, nor an arena for anyone’s wars,” he said in a televised address last week, presumably referring to Iranian control over Lebanon’s decision-making and regional actors deciding the country’s fate rather than its own leadership.

“By talking to Israel, we are asserting our independence and decoupling from the Iranian track,” said Sami Nader, a Lebanese political analyst.

Hezbollah has condemned the talks, yet the Lebanese state and the Israeli government have paved the way for future meetings. The next envoy-level talks are scheduled for April 23. There are many challenges ahead, and participants would do well if they made haste slowly.

“This is a process, not an event,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged at the start of the talks between Israel and Lebanon last week.

It is unclear if Trump will include Lebanon in negotiations with Iran and make Hezbollah’s disarmament a condition to ending the war with Iran and reaching a final deal. Even if he does, Iran is unlikely to oblige. Michael Young, a senior editor at the Carnegie Middle East Center and a Lebanon expert, posted on X that he didn’t see Iran as willing “to surrender its Hezbollah card.”

Relations between Israel and Lebanon are at an inflection point and require strategic patience to build. Any misstep, such as placing extreme pressure on an underprepared Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) to disarm Hezbollah overnight, could risk sectarian strife. Last August, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem warned that there “will be no life” in Lebanon if the Armed Forces confronted the group. Additionally, there are concerns about Israel’s ability to restrain its more hawkish impulses, which could spoil the tempo and strengthen Hezbollah’s claim that Israel seeks to expand its territory rather than merely ensure its security.

One approach might be to pursue a separate track with the Lebanese state itself that shifts the balance of power in the state’s favor, strengthens the Army over time, and softens Lebanese attitudes toward Israel. Israeli and Lebanese experts appear to agree that the LAF needs to be strengthened before it can disarm Hezbollah. (The Lebanese Army enjoys a 90 percent approval rating but ranks 118th out of 145 countries in the Global Firepower index, which measures military strength.)

Israeli scholars Orna Mizrahi and Moran Levanoni argued in favor of higher salaries for the Lebanese Army in a recent paper for the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), an Israeli think tank. They opposed the “absorption of intact Hezbollah units into the Lebanese Army.” At the same time, they supported the integration of individual Hezbollah fighters after proper screening.

They also argued for adopting the Dayton Plan—retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton’s methods to reform and modernize the Palestinian police in the West Bank—to reform the Lebanese Army. This approach aimed to create a Palestinian police force capable of managing law and order in a future independent Palestinian state while considering Israeli security concerns. Any plan to help the Lebanese Army must develop “training tracks for soldiers and commanders with the assistance of Western actors,” the two scholars argued.

Nader, the political analyst, backed the idea of a multinational force—not necessarily a U.S. deployment, as Mizrahi and Levanoni of the INSS proposed—but with a stronger mandate than UNIFIL. Since the late 1970s, more than 40 countries have deployed U.N. peacekeepers to Lebanon for monitoring roles but without a mandate to use weapons or force.

“If you have merely an observer status, as UNIFIL does, you are squeezed and fired at by both Hezbollah and Israel. We need a force that supports Lebanon’s army in handling the task of disarming Hezbollah,” Nader said. “A new UNIFIL.”

“Now is the right time, as UNIFIL’s mandate expires at the end of the year. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be under the U.N. but an alliance of the willing, with countries such as Italy,” he added.

It would be naive to think that Hezbollah will give up its weapons without a fight. It is equally unlikely that any Western country is willing to deploy its soldiers in what would become door-to-door fighting. Britain and France have pledged to deploy troops in Ukraine but only after Russia agrees to a peace deal. An international stabilization force—comprising multinational troops—is also part of Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, but even that hasn’t yet materialized.

The fix won’t be easy. Yet Israel and Lebanon have a shot to try to get it right. Talks won’t lead to a “new dawn” in the Middle East, said Avner Vilan, a former senior Israeli security official and Iran expert. But he hoped that they would lead to “something that grows down the line” and shifts the balance of power in favor of Lebanese state institutions, ultimately “diplomatically disarming” Hezbollah.