5-7-26 The War in Lebanon (On the disarmament of Hezbollah)

Recent events:

Following the events of October 2023, Israel began an intensive bombing campaign in Gaza, followed by a ground invasion. In solidarity with the Palestinians, Hezbollah would eventually, almost reluctantly, launch rockets from Southern Lebanon into Israel, almost certainly at the urging of their Iranian puppetmasters. Israel would retaliate, but would intensify this retaliation for about 2 months starting in September 2024, starting with the infamous pager attacks, and continuing with an intense bombing campaign that killed Hezbollah’s long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah, and a limit ground incursion. A ceasefire would be reached in November 2024, that stipulated withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon, and withdrawal of Hezbollah to north of the Litani River.

Ever since that “ceasefire” went into effect, Israel continued to launch airstrikes, killing almost 100 Lebanese civilians over the following year. Though this was reportedly done due to the presence of Hezbollah forces south of the Litani (which frankly, is almost certainly true), the fact remains that there were no direct attacks from Hezbollah against Israel until March 2026, while during that time Israel continued to attack Lebanon with regularity.

In the days following the initial American and Israeli attempts at decapitating the Iranian government, a handful of rockets were launched from southern Lebanon into Israel by Hezbollah (with no Israeli casualties). This was used as a pretext by Israel for an intense bombing campaign across Lebanon killing thousands of civilians and displacing about a million people (a huge proportion of the population of an already-small country). There has also been a ground incursion where Israeli forces are occupying parts of southern Lebanon, a few miles along the border, though have publicly announced plans to create a “security zone” reaching up to the Litani River. This has involved the complete demolition of many towns and villages in these occupied zones. All this has been justified by saying that Hezbollah broke the ceasefire, a laughable assertion given the dozens of Israeli airstrikes and dozens of dead Lebanese civilians since that “ceasefire” went into effect in September of 2024.

While Hezbollah is fighting back to the extent that they are able, and it is likely, from footage released of their drone attacks on Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, that they are inflicting greater casualties than is being reported by Israel, they are essentially unable to meaningfully attack Israel within its borders, and have thus far been unable to meaningfully prevent occupation of Lebanese territory.

Impact on Lebanon:

The displacement of such a large proportion of the population, the occupation of Lebanese territory, the destruction of so many villages in the occupied territory, and the periodic airstrikes throughout the country that have killed thousands of innocent civilians, are putting a tremendous amount of strain on a country that was already on the verge of being a failed state since runaway inflation took hold in the country in 2019, exacerbated by a large population of Syrian refugees in the preceding years that were displaced by the Syrian Civil War.

There is a tremendous amount of resentment against Hezbollah from the non-Shia Lebanese population (recall that ~30% of the population is Shia, ~30% is Sunni, ~30% is Christian), and the government is under a lot of pressure from its own population, as well as the US and Israel, to take meaningful steps to disarm Hezbollah. During the Lebanese Civil War from ~1975-1990, there were many disparate warring factions within the country, and in the years following cessation of hostilities all of these groups disarmed with the exception of Hezbollah. The problem, of course, is that Hezbollah has spent the decades since its inception gathering weapons (and not only small arms, but anti-tank weapons and missiles and other heavy military equipment) with Iranian support and preparing for a large conflict with Israel. As I had mentioned in my previous post, these Hezbollah fighters will have had their morale impacted by how poorly their fight against Israel is going, but they are willing martyrs one and all. They have had significant combat experience fighting against the Israelis (to some extent), and fighting in Syria. Meanwhile, the only other meaningful armed presence in Lebanon is the Lebanese military, supplied by a bankrupt government, woefully underequipped, undertrained, and with relatively poor morale and motivation to fight in comparison to Hezbollah.

If the government were to try to forcibly disarm an unwilling Hezbollah, the most likely outcome is civil war. A civil war that would particularly ravage the south of the country, but would affect the entirety of it, given how spread out the different religious groups are throughout the country. It’s also not clear, once all the dust settles from this hypothetical war, what the outcome would be. The Lebanese Army as it stands would not be able to subdue Hezbollah by itself. Defeating and disarming Hezbollah would likely require an occupation of most/the entirety of the country by a foreign power invested in fighting Hezbollah (Israel, the US, or Syria), which would be a disaster for the sovereignty of an independent Lebanon. Another possibility is that foreign powers (Israel, the US, Syria, Turkey, Gulf Arab states) might arm Christian and Sunni paramilitary groups like during the civil war, which would result in a country that would be a fractured and failed state for many years.

Whether either possibility would result in a brighter future for the people of Lebanon is very much in doubt, and I happen to not think so. Importantly however, I don’t think that either one of these outcomes would be seen as negatives by Israel, and I think there’s some component of their strategy that is hoping for a civil war in Lebanon.

So if the Lebanese government forcibly disarming Hezbollah is not a good solution, what is? I really don’t know. Maintaining the current status quo, with an Israeli occupation of the south, displacement of a million people, destruction of the towns and villages in the south, and random air strikes killing innocent Lebanese civilians, will lead to the complete breakdown of an already-fragile country. If Iran is sufficiently weakened by the current conflict and Hezbollah’s financial and military backing dries up, the hope is that Hezbollah will see that they have more to gain, long-term, politically by disarming and being just a “normal” political party advocating for their constituents through normal political channels, whatever that may mean with the dysfunctional, corrupt, and sectarian state of Lebanese politics.

Another possibility is that the Israeli occupation becomes too costly for the Israelis and political will for it dries up at home (which could happen if they start to suffer significant casualties as in prior Israeli invasions or if a more left-leaning government comes to power), leading them to make a ceasefire with Hezbollah and/or the Lebanese government that essentially sees a return to the status quo pre-March 2026, with or without a long-term occupation of the south of Lebanon. The continuation of Hezbollah functioning as a “state-within-a-state” is not ideal, and would serve to inhibit the stabilization and development of Lebanon as a state, and a move away from sectarian politics would be impossible in this situation.

I don’t know which of these possibilities will occur, and we can only hope for an outcome that leads to a better future for the Lebanese, and this most optimistically likely includes the peaceful disarmament of Hezbollah and their incorporation into the Lebanese government as a normal political party.

The Israeli Occupation:

None of which is to say that I support the Israeli war effort against Hezbollah. Israel needs to be fought and resisted because their actions are reprehensible, and so long as they are the most powerful country in the Middle East while simultaneously representing a colonial settler state that uses Jewish ethnicity/religion as the basis for its existence, they will act to undermine and weaken their Arab neighbors.

With regards to Lebanon specifically, this is certainly not the first time they’ve invaded the country. They invaded up to the Litani in 1978 before withdrawing later that year. They invaded all the way to Beirut and briefly occupied it in 1982, before their mounting losses forced a steady retreat until they withdrew entirely from the country in 2000. They invaded in 2006 for a few weeks before again withdrawing, and stayed outside of Lebanon until 2024 as we discussed at the beginning of this post. Always their actions are under the guise of defending themselves, whether it was from the PLO or from Hezbollah, and always they inflict misery and indiscriminate destruction on the areas that they occupy.

Fighting the Israelis may be righteous by any measure, but the reality of the current situation is important to acknowledge. Israel stands as a Western colony in the Middle East; their military and intelligence services are without rival in the Middle East, and they have the backing of the world’s superpower, as well as the tacit support of most European countries as well. Aside from Iran, most of the governments in the region pragmatically either overtly or (more commonly) covertly have friendly relations with the Israeli government, even if the populace of their own countries would not stand for it.

The actions of Iran and Hezbollah do not, at this time, pose a reasonable threat to Israel’s ability to achieve their geopolitical aims. Instead, Hezbollah’s rockets into Israel, with their symbolic resistance, have brought very real and destructive consequences to their countrymen as a result of Israeli barbarity while failing to inflict any meaningful damage to the enemy. The reality is that Hezbollah’s actions, by way of Israel’s response, have led to a tremendous amount of suffering for the Lebanese people, the majority of whom are adamantly opposed to military action against Israel. It is an injustice that this small country, with its weak economy, ineffective government, and unwilling populace should bear the brunt of Israeli anger; an injustice for which both Hezbollah and Israel are culpable.

The arc of history is long. The current nation of Israel is not the first time that Arabs (or the people of this region) have been subjugated by outside powers. The lands of Palestine and the Levant have alternately been populated by Canaanites, the early Jews, and the Phoenicians. They in turn have were conquered by Egyptians, Assyrians, Neo-Babylonians, Greeks, and the Romans/Byzantines. The Arab conquests would forever shape the region with the spread of its language and religion, but even then these lands would face occupation by the Crusaders briefly, and then the Ottomans for hundreds of years. The Israelis are just the latest in a long line of powers in the region, and their days are not without end. It does not help anyone for Hezbollah to uselessly attack the Israelis, when it weakens and destabilizes Lebanon to do so. The focus for now should be to prioritize stability to allow for social, economic, and political growth that will allow Arabs to prosper.