Analysis: Disarming Hezbollah key to recovery but task complicated by regional shifts, ceasefire violations
By Mireille Rebeiz, Dickinson College
(THE CONVERSATION) Within a span of two weeks from late April to early May 2025, Israel launched two aerial attacks ostensibly targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon: The first, on April 27, struck a building in Beirut's southern suburbs; the second, an assault in southern Lebanon, left one person dead and eight others injured.
While the attacks may not be an aberration in the long history of Israel's military action in Lebanon, the latest episodes were notable given the context: Israel and Hezbollah have been nominally locked in a truce for five months.
As an expert on Lebanese history and culture, I believe the latest violations clearly show the fragility of that ceasefire. But more importantly, they complicate the Lebanese government's mission of disarming Hezbollah, the paramilitary group that remains a powerful force in the country despite a series of Israeli targeted killings of its senior members. That task forms the backbone of a nearly 20-year-old United Nations resolution meant to bring lasting peace to Lebanon.
- The long road to a ceasefire -
In the aftermath of Hamas' attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Hezbollah vowed solidarity with the Palestinian movement, resulting in a running series of tit-for-tat attacks with Israel that escalated into a full-blown war in the fall of 2024.
On Oct. 1, 2024, Israel invaded Lebanon – the sixth time since 1978 – in order to directly confront Hezbollah. That operation led to the killing of an estimated 3,800 Lebanese people and the displacement of over 1 million civilians. The damage to Lebanon's economy is estimated at US$14 billion, according to the World Bank.
Hezbollah lost a lot of its fighters, arsenal and popular support as a result. More importantly, these losses discredited Hezbollah's claim that it alone can guarantee Lebanon's territorial integrity against Israel's invasion.
The United States and France brokered a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel on Nov. 27, 2024. The agreement was based in part on United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which was adopted in 2006 to end that year's 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah. The resolution had as a central tenet the disarmament of armed militias, including Hezbollah, and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon.
The 2024 ceasefire built on that resolution. It required Hezbollah's retreat beyond the Litani River, which at its closest point is about 20 miles from northern Israel. In return, and by February 2025, Israel was to gradually withdraw from Lebanese territories in order to allow the Lebanese army to take control of areas in the south and to confiscate all unauthorized weapons – a nod to Hezbollah's arsenal.
Yet, Israel maintained the occupation of several posts in southern Lebanon after that deadline and continued to launch attacks on Lebanese soil, the most recent being on May 8, 2025.
- The challenge of disarming Hezbollah -
Despite these violations, large-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah has not resumed. But the next step, a lasting peace based on the laying down of Hezbollah arms, is complicated by a series of factors, not least the sectarian nature of Lebanese politics.
Since its inception in 1920, Lebanon's governance has been defined by a polarized and formally sectarian political system, which seeded the roots of a decades-long civil conflict that began in 1975. A series of invasions by Israel in response to attacks from Lebanese-based Palestinian groups exacerbated sectarianism and instability.
From this mix, Hezbollah emerged and became a powerful force during the late 1980s.
The Taif Agreement, ending Lebanon's civil war in 1989, formally recognized the state's right to resist the Israeli occupation of Lebanese territories – and with it Hezbollah's presence as a force of resistance. An uneasy coexistence between the government and Hezbollah emerged, which often spilled over into violence, including assassinations of important public figures.
More recently, Hezbollah was responsible for a two-year political vacuum as it mobilized members to repeatedly block opposition candidates for the vacant presidency in the hopes of installing a leader that would support its agenda.
In January 2025 that standoff ended when Lebanon's parliament elected army chief Joseph Aoun, a Maronite Christian, as president.
The acquiescence of Hezbollah and its allies was in part a sign of how much the power of the Shiite militia had been diminished by Israel during the conflict.
But it is also the result of a widespread general understanding in Lebanon of the need to end the humanitarian crisis caused by Israel's war. The new president has brought much-needed hope to a battered country – one that has been plagued by numerous crises, including a collapsed economy that by 2019 had pushed 80% of the population into poverty.
But Aoun's presidency signals the changing political environment in another key way; unlike his predecessors, Aoun has not endorsed Hezbollah as a legitimate resistance movement.
Further, Aoun has announced his intentions to disarm the groupand to fully implement resolution 1701.
To this end, Aoun has made impressive gains. According to state officials, the Lebanese army had by the end of April 2025 dismantled over 90% of Hezbollah's infrastructure south of the Litani River and taken control over these sites.
Yet Hezbollah's chief, Naim Kassem, doggedly rejects calls to disarm and integrate the group's fighters into the Lebanese armed forces.
Even in Hezbollah's weakened position, Kassem believes only his movement, and not the Lebanese state, can guarantee Lebanon's safety against Israel. And Israel violations of the ceasefire only play into this narrative.
"We will not allow anyone to remove Hezbollah's weapons," Kassem said after one recent airstrike, vowing that the group would hand over weapons only when Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon and ended it's air incursions.
- The challenge going forward -
Yet countries including the United States and Qatar – not to mention Israel – consider Hezbollah's disarmament a prerequisite to both peace and much-needed international assistance.
And this makes the task ahead for Aoun difficult. He will be well aware that international aid is desperately needed. But pressing too hard to accommodate either Israel's or Hezbollah's interests risks, respectively, exacerbating either domestic political pressures or jeopardizing future foreign investment.
To complicate matters further, the situation in Lebanon is hardly helped by developments in neighboring Syria.
The fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad in December 2024 has added another element of regional uncertainty and the fear in Lebanon of further sectarian violence. Although Syria's new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has vowed to protect all religious groups, he was not able to prevent the massacre of Alawite civilians in several coastal towns – an attack that triggered a fresh wave of refugees heading toward Lebanon.
The removal of Assad was another blow for Hezbollah, a strong Assad ally that benefited from years of Syrian interference in Lebanon.
- The challenge of international relations -
For now, a return to full-scale war in Lebanon does not appear to be on the table.
But what comes next for Lebanon and Hezbollah depends on many factors, not least the state of Israel's ongoing war on Gaza and any spillover into Lebanon. But the actions of other regional actors, notably Saudi Arabia and Iran, matter too. Should Saudi Arabia be encouraged down the path of normalizing relations with Israel – a process interrupted by the Oct. 7 attack – then it would impact Lebanon in many ways.
Any deal would, from the Saudi perspective, likely have to include a solution to the question of Palestinian statehood, taking away one of Hezbollah's main grievances. It would also likely put pressure on Lebanon and Israel to find a solution to its long-standing border dispute.
Meanwhile, Iran, too, is seemingly turning to diplomatic means to address some of its regional issues, with nascent moves to both improve ties with Saudi Arabia and forge forward with a new nuclear deal with the U.S. This could see Tehran turn away from a policy of trying to impose its influence throughout the region by arming groups aligned with Tehran – first among them, Hezbollah.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/disarming-hezbollah-is-key-to-lebanons-recovery-but-task-is-complicated-by-regional-shifts-ceasefire-violations-255671.
Source: Associated Press
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