The central paradox of Israeli policy in Lebanon has long ceased to be hidden. Israel demands from Beirut what any normal state is indeed obligated to seek: a monopoly on arms, the dismantling of Hezbollah’s autonomous military infrastructure, control over the south of the country, and the transformation of the Lebanese Armed Forces into the only legitimate instrument of security. There is political logic in this demand. There is a right to security. There is the memory of rocket attacks on northern Israel. There is the reality of October 7, 2023. There is also the Iranian factor. But the problem lies elsewhere: Israel simultaneously demands strength from the Lebanese state and has spent years doing everything to keep that state weak. It is precisely this internal rupture that turns a security strategy into a machine of self-defeat.
The Lebanese state is being asked to do the nearly impossible: disarm Hezbollah without a civil war, hold the south without sufficient resources, control the border without a fully capable army, and implement UN Security Council Resolution 1701 amid a devastated economy, political fragmentation, and constant strikes. Then, when Beirut fails, Israel receives a convenient argument: Lebanon is unable to control its own territory, therefore Israel must act on its own. This logic feeds on itself. It does not solve the problem. It reproduces it.
Resolution 1701, adopted after the 2006 war, requires the area between the Blue Line and the Litani River to be free of armed formations other than the Lebanese Armed Forces and UNIFIL. UNIFIL’s mandate directly includes supporting the LAF as it deploys in the south, monitoring the ceasefire, facilitating humanitarian access, and assisting in the creation of an area free of unauthorized armed personnel, assets, and weapons. But the document that all sides cite as the foundation of security has never been fully converted into political reality. Hezbollah is not the only party responsible for this failure. The entire architecture of regional hypocrisy is responsible: Lebanon is simultaneously recognized as a sovereign state and treated as a geographical platform for other people’s wars.
1701: The Document That Became an Incantation
The ceasefire agreement of November 27, 2024, once again returned Resolution 1701 to the center of the diplomatic stage. The text of the agreement states directly that only official Lebanese military and security structures should have the right to carry weapons in Lebanon, while the government undertakes to prevent operations by Hezbollah and other armed groups against Israel. At the same time, Israel committed itself not to conduct offensive military operations against Lebanese targets on Lebanese territory by land, air, or sea.
On paper, this looked like the beginning of a way out of the deadlock. In reality, it became another test of an old truth: a ceasefire without a political mechanism is not peace. It is a pause between strikes. For Lebanon to truly begin pushing Hezbollah out of the south, Beirut needed three things: a combat-capable army, international cover, and guarantees that Israel would not undermine the process itself through constant strikes. None of these conditions was sufficiently secured.
According to the text of the ceasefire, the United States and France intended to facilitate the deployment of 10,000 LAF troops in the south of the country and improve the capabilities of the Lebanese army. But numbers on paper and power on the ground are different things. An army that is supposed to confiscate weapons from the most powerful nonstate armed structure in the Middle East cannot survive on symbolic assistance, political declarations, and temporary support packages. It needs intelligence, engineering units, counter-drone systems, secure communications, transport, salaries, social stability for personnel, and a political order that will not tear the country apart from within.
Hezbollah Is Not Just a Lebanese Militia
It is a mistake to view Hezbollah as an ordinary internal Lebanese problem. It is not only a party, not only a military wing, not only a network of social structures within the Shiite community. It is a key element of Iran’s forward deterrence system against Israel. Its rocket arsenal was built over years as an instrument designed to make any strike on Iran strategically costly for Israel. According to CSIS estimates, Hezbollah’s arsenal before the latest wars was assessed at roughly 130,000 rockets, while in 2006 it had about 15,000 rockets and shells, of which nearly 4,000 were fired at Israel during the 34-day war.
That is why Israel views Hezbollah not as a local opponent, but as the northern front of Iran’s strategy. After October 7, 2023, this logic became even harsher. As early as October 8, Hezbollah opened fire on the Shebaa Farms area and northern Israel. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights states in its 2026 report that hostilities began on October 8, 2023, followed by successive escalations, mass destruction, and population displacement.
Yet even this logic has a limit. If Israel’s goal is not merely to punish Hezbollah, but to create lasting security in the north, strikes alone are not enough. Israel can kill commanders, destroy depots, tunnels, positions, launchers, and communications infrastructure. It can temporarily weaken Hezbollah. It can alter the balance of fear. But it cannot create a Lebanese state by air power. And without a state in southern Lebanon, the vacuum will again be filled by whoever has discipline, money, ideology, weapons, and an external patron.
An Army Without Money Against an Organization With Rockets
The Lebanese Armed Forces have found themselves in an absurd situation. They are required to perform a strategic function, but for decades they have not been given a strategic resource. The United States does remain the LAF’s main external partner. According to the U.S. State Department, since 2006 American investment in the Lebanese army has exceeded $3 billion. That figure looks impressive, but in reality it has been spread across almost two decades and has not turned the LAF into a fully capable force able to neutralize Hezbollah on its own.
The context here is decisive. Lebanon is experiencing one of the worst economic collapses in the modern world. The World Bank has reported that poverty in the country more than tripled over a decade, reaching 44 percent of the population, while one in three Lebanese in the surveyed areas fell below the poverty line. UNDP indicates that Lebanon’s real GDP collapsed by 21.4 percent in 2020, contracted again by 5.7 percent in 2024, inflation reached 268.78 percent in April 2023, and public debt in 2023 climbed to 180 percent of GDP.
In such a country, the army cannot be merely a coercive instrument. It becomes the last institution of statehood. When a soldier is thinking not only about a combat mission, but also about how to feed his family; when the state budget has collapsed; when public trust has been destroyed by the Beirut port explosion, corruption, and the banking collapse; demanding that the LAF carry out an immediate operation against Hezbollah means demanding a marathon sprint from a sick body.
And yet the LAF has begun doing what previously seemed impossible to many. Reuters reported in October 2025 that the Lebanese army was quietly but systematically clearing Hezbollah weapons depots in the south, destroying caches, sealing tunnels, and accelerating inspection missions. At the same time, Reuters sources emphasized that the army needed even explosives to destroy the sites it had found, while Israeli strikes and Israel’s presence on Lebanese territory complicated the process. Here lies the whole tragedy of Lebanon in a single episode: the state is trying to begin dismantling a parallel army, but lacks even the technical means to destroy the weapons it has discovered.
UNIFIL Bothers Everyone Because It Reminds Them of the Rules
UNIFIL has also become part of this contradiction. Israel has criticized the mission for decades for its inability to stop Hezbollah. There is some truth in that criticism: UNIFIL has indeed not become a force that physically disarms armed formations. But the mission’s mandate never included the task of waging war against Hezbollah. Its function is to accompany the LAF, monitor the ceasefire, record violations, and help the state restore its authority in the south.
If UNIFIL is removed, the problem will not disappear. What will disappear is the observer, the coordination channel, and the international framework. In August 2025, the UN Security Council extended UNIFIL’s mandate for the last time, until December 31, 2026, after which the mission is expected to begin withdrawing in 2027. This decision can be presented as a transfer of responsibility to Lebanon. But if the transfer of responsibility is not accompanied by the real strengthening of the LAF, it turns into something else: pulling a support beam out of a building that is already cracking.
In October 2024, UNIFIL reported numerous incidents, damage to its facilities, and injuries to peacekeepers amid Israel’s ground operation and demands that peacekeepers leave their positions. For Israel, this may have looked like clearing operational space. But strategically, it hurts Israel as well. Because the fewer international mechanisms remain in southern Lebanon, the greater the likelihood that after each new operation the vacuum will again be filled by Hezbollah.
Bombs Do Not Disarm Political Armies
History shows that serious disarmament of armed movements almost never happens through force alone. Force can change the balance. Force can compel a party to recognize the cost of war. But disarmament itself requires a political package, a legitimate mechanism, and a future for those who are expected to lay down their arms.
The IRA in Northern Ireland did not disarm simply because it was bombed. Disarmament became possible after the Good Friday Agreement, the inclusion of its political wing in constitutional politics, and the work of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning. The University of Notre Dame notes that the agreement provided for the creation of a commission to monitor, verify, and confirm the disarmament of all paramilitary organizations, and that the process was completed in 2005.
The FARC in Colombia laid down their arms within the framework of a peace agreement that included UN monitoring, transitional justice, reintegration, and political participation. According to the UN, on June 27, 2017, the mission in Colombia received 7,132 individual weapons from the FARC, while subsequent mission materials referred to the broader process of registration, extraction, and destruction of weapons and caches.
In Aceh, Indonesia, the disarmament of the GAM movement became part of the 2005 Helsinki Memorandum of Understanding, which included weapons decommissioning, demobilization, reintegration, political participation, amnesty, and international monitoring. The European Union’s Aceh Monitoring Mission was created precisely to oversee the implementation of these provisions.
The general lesson is clear: an armed organization lays down its weapons not when pressure is simply applied against it, but when its supporters are offered a political formula, the state is given strength, and the international environment guarantees implementation of the agreement. Remove one element, and the process falls apart. In Lebanon today, almost everything is missing: the full legitimacy of the state, sufficient coercive capacity, durable security guarantees, an economic package for the south, and a political mechanism that would allow the Shiite community not to perceive disarmament as capitulation to Israel.
Israel’s Dilemma: Security Today Against Security Tomorrow
Israel has the right to demand that its northern communities not live under the threat of rockets and drones. The evacuation of residents from the north after October 7 became for Israeli society a trauma no less serious than a military problem. A state that cannot bring its citizens back home loses the basic meaning of its security system.
But this is exactly where the strategic trap begins. The more Israel destroys the infrastructure of southern Lebanon, the weaker the state that is supposed to replace Hezbollah becomes. The more often it carries out strikes during a formal ceasefire, the easier it becomes for Hezbollah to prove to its supporters that weapons are still necessary. The longer Israeli troops hold positions on Lebanese territory, the harder it becomes for the Lebanese government to explain to society why disarmament must come first and Israel’s withdrawal only afterward.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that after the ceasefire of November 27, 2024, Israeli forces remained at five positions along the border, while operations continued almost daily, resulting in another 139 confirmed civilian deaths by March 1, 2026. This is not merely humanitarian statistics. This is political fuel for Hezbollah. Every destroyed village, every displaced person who has not returned home, every dead civilian becomes an argument in favor of the very armed autonomy Israel wants to eliminate.
Trump and the Rare Window That Can Easily Be Lost
In the spring of 2026, the situation took an unexpected turn. President Trump publicly stated that Israel would no longer bomb Lebanon and wrote that Israel was “forbidden” by the United States from doing so. Reuters noted that the statement came in an unusually harsh tone toward Washington’s longtime ally, while Trump himself emphasized that a possible deal with Iran was not linked to the Lebanese track.
This statement matters not as rhetoric, but as a symptom. For the first time in a long while, Washington publicly made it clear that an endless Israeli campaign in Lebanon is not automatically an acceptable price for regional security. But the question is whether this will become policy or remain another impulsive post. Lebanon cannot be stabilized by a single statement on social media. It requires money, an army program, multilateral monitoring, pressure on Israel, pressure on Hezbollah, and work with Saudi Arabia, France, Qatar, Egypt, the European Union, and international financial institutions.
In the summer of 2025, U.S. special envoy Tom Barrack promoted the idea of Hezbollah’s phased disarmament in exchange for an end to Israeli operations and the withdrawal of troops. According to Reuters, Lebanon was expected to present a plan that would persuade Hezbollah to surrender its weapons without military coercion, including consideration of the economic situation of Iran-funded fighters. Al Jazeera quoted Barrack as saying that the Lebanese government “did its part” and that Israel now had to respond with an “equal handshake.”
There is common sense in this formula. Hezbollah’s disarmament cannot begin as a civil war waged by the state against its own Shiite community. It can begin only as a complex process: the state is strengthened, Israel stops its strikes and withdraws from the positions it holds, international donors finance the reconstruction of the south, the LAF takes control of the territory, and Hezbollah gradually loses the argument that autonomous weapons remain necessary.
The Price of Humanitarian Catastrophe
Lebanon is already paying a price that goes far beyond military statistics. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that from March 2 to March 22, 2026, during a new escalation in Lebanon, at least 1,029 people were killed, more than 2,786 were wounded, and more than one million were displaced. During that period, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, at least 118 children and 40 health workers were killed.
This destruction does not make Lebanon more capable of disarming Hezbollah. It makes Lebanon less capable of functioning at all. The state that is supposed to collect taxes, pay soldiers, repair roads, rebuild schools, and hold the south finds itself buried under bodies, refugees, ruins, and political rage. In such a context, Hezbollah can be weakened militarily, but its social base does not disappear. On the contrary, if the state arrives late and empty-handed, while the armed organization arrives earlier with money, funerals, compensation, and the slogan of resistance, the question of loyalty is not resolved in favor of the state.
What Must Be Done
The real way out is not a mystery. It is unpleasant, complex, slow, but clear. First, the ceasefire must be stabilized through a monitoring mechanism that records violations by all sides and makes them politically costly. Second, the LAF must be sharply strengthened not through symbolic packages, but through a full-fledged army recovery program: engineering assets, communications, intelligence, mobility, salaries, border control, and counter-drone capabilities. Third, the international presence must be preserved until Lebanon can actually replace it with its own institutions. A final UNIFIL withdrawal without a prepared LAF would be a gift not to Israel, but to those who know how to live in a vacuum.
Fourth, the reconstruction of southern Lebanon must be treated as part of Israel’s security, not as a humanitarian handout. A destroyed village in southern Lebanon is not only a Lebanese problem. It is Hezbollah’s future argument. Fifth, there must be a diplomatic formula between Israel and Lebanon, even if at first it is technical, indirect, and limited to border issues, prisoners, troop withdrawal, the return of displaced persons, and control of the south. Without a political channel, military logic will once again consume everything.
The Main Conclusion: You Cannot Demand a Result While Destroying the Instrument
Israel wants security. Lebanon wants sovereignty. The United States wants a manageable regional balance. Hezbollah wants to preserve its weapons as a source of power and as part of Iranian deterrence. Iran wants northern Israel to remain vulnerable. On this chessboard, the weakest piece is the Lebanese state. Yet for some reason, it is precisely this state that is being asked to make the hardest move.
Israeli strategy will continue to fail as long as it is built on a contradiction: demanding that Beirut establish a monopoly on force while simultaneously undermining the institutions that could secure that monopoly. Bombs can destroy depots. Bombs can kill commanders. Bombs can temporarily blind a network, sever communications, and push Hezbollah back from the border. But bombs do not create legitimacy. Bombs do not pay soldiers’ salaries. Bombs do not build a state.
If Washington truly wants to change the Lebanese scenario, it will have to recognize the obvious: the security of northern Israel begins not only with strikes against Hezbollah, but also with restoring Lebanon’s capacity to function as a state. If that does not happen, the region will return once again to the old cycle: Israel bombs, Lebanon weakens, Hezbollah survives, Iran preserves its lever, northern Israel remains under threat, and Resolution 1701 once again becomes not a peace plan, but a diplomatic prayer that everyone recites and no one fulfills.