armistice agreement<\/a> Lebanon must “effectively demonstrate its ability to assert its sovereignty” as a condition for extending the fragile pause in hostilities, agreed on 16 April. Israel, for its part, reserves the right to take “at any time, all necessary measures in self-defense” and to keep its forces deployed on Lebanese soil.<\/p>\nIt is the framework through which Lebanese sovereignty is to be demonstrated. Beirut is expected to take action against Hezbollah’s weapons, while Israel effectively maintains open military independence inside Lebanese territory, and there is no credible path to deterrence on the table.<\/p>\n
From Washington’s perspective, the logic is easy enough to understand. Hezbollah is weak, Tehran is under pressure, Damascus is responsive, and the government in Beirut has never been more willing to accede to the United States’ demands. From the White House, it might look like a convergence: a moment where Israel would be free to occupy land, displace southern communities, and create a Lebanese state that the US could shape, while giving a float annexation.<\/p>\n
But a government that is easy to influence cannot truly govern. There is a way to disarm Hezbollah and strengthen Lebanese sovereignty, but it is not the current path imposed by the US and Israel.<\/p>\n
Hezbollah, state and limits of force<\/h2>\n
No serious argument for a Lebanese state can avoid what Hezbollah has done; More than any other Lebanese actor, it has weakened the state’s monopoly on force. It has built and maintained a military structure outside formal institutions, reserved for itself the right to shape decisions about war and peace, vetoed government decisions, and eliminated many of its domestic opponents through force or the threat of it. The result was a mixed system where sovereignty existed in law but not in full practice.<\/p>\n
Yet the belief that external forces can fix this situation has been tested before and failed. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon to drive out the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). It succeeded in driving the PLO leadership out of Beirut, but could not produce a stable Lebanese government or a settlement in line with Israeli priorities.<\/p>\n
The Lebanese Civil War entered a new and arguably more brutal phase, marked by the Israeli occupation that lasted until 2000. That capture became one of the central conditions in which Hezbollah emerged, consolidated and claimed the legitimacy on which it trades today.<\/p>\n
Brute force repeatedly changed the immediate equilibrium, helping to create the social and political arena in which new armed legitimacy could emerge.<\/p>\n
Lebanon has been here before, in another sense. Throughout its modern history, as one protectorate has weakened, another has stepped in to fill the void and claim to support Lebanese sovereignty on its own terms.<\/p>\n
Today fits that pattern. Hezbollah and Iran are losing the stranglehold they have held over Beirut for two decades, and Washington and Israel are moving in to establish a new dominance. The language of sovereignty is once again doing what sovereignty, in reality, cannot do.<\/p>\n
leader without influence<\/h2>\n
The government of Prime Minister Nawaf Salaam and President Joseph Aoun, formed with US-Saudi support after the end of the 2024 war with Israel, is the first national unity government to include Hezbollah and its allies, while also clearly articulating its position on strengthening military power under the state.<\/p>\n
Under this policy, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) began destroying Hezbollah infrastructure south of the Litani River before clashes broke out last month. Since then, the government has outlawed Hezbollah’s military wing, expelled the Iranian ambassador and ordered authorities to identify, arrest and deport members of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).<\/p>\n
Some of these steps were demonstrative, some genuine, but all were limited by the current reality in which the Lebanese state had little influence domestically and internationally. That hasn’t stopped Salaam and Aoun from trying.<\/p>\n
At present the convergence with US and Israeli interests is temporary and will break down the moment the question shifts from Hezbollah’s weapons to what Israeli troops are still doing on Lebanese soil.<\/p>\n
The reality is that Lebanon’s current detention system cannot be broken militarily before it can be changed politically. Hezbollah’s arsenal is not merely a military fact; It is also the stark expression of a political claim: the Lebanese state, as it exists, cannot reliably protect parts of its population against Israel and so an alternative structure of deterrence is necessary. One can reject that claim and still recognize its strength.<\/p>\n
If Hezbollah is to be permanently disarmed, Lebanon needs a credible replacement for the functions it has come to perform: military deterrence, political representation, social security and assurance that one can afford the costs of confronting Israel. In its absence the question will not be resolved by replacement, military pressure, occupation and violation of international law. They will reopen it in a harsher form.<\/p>\n
What would a durable agreement require?<\/h2>\n
An orderly political process is the only possible path to the results Washington wants. It should start with reciprocity. Lebanon cannot be expected to move decisively on its most explosive internal issue while Israel retains open military independence inside its territory.<\/p>\n
If communities in the southern and eastern Bekaa Valley are to see a change in the threat environment, it means monitoring attacks, a timetable for Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory, and a mechanism for deciding on violations that does not reduce Lebanese sovereignty to an Israeli claim of necessity. The current agreement does not include any of this. It contains the opposite.<\/p>\n
A sustainable agreement would require a phased expansion of state authority. The LAF can gradually assume responsibilities, deploy, monitor, and expand its role over time.<\/p>\n
Even if Washington wants the LAF to fight Hezbollah, it is absolutely certain that it is neither willing nor able to do so, especially when Israel is attacking the country and Washington is forcing it into unrealistic timelines as part of pressure-driven diplomacy. Asking the army to do this is not to strengthen the state; This is meant to expose his weakness and initiate civil conflict.<\/p>\n
State sovereignty would require a national defense doctrine. If Hezbollah is to abandon its claim to deterrence, the replacement must be a doctrine supported by credible resources and diplomacy that can produce state-led resistance against Israeli aggression.<\/p>\n
Hezbollah’s patience has never depended solely on weapons. It developed within areas of state failure. Withdraw its military infrastructure while the state can still provide security, reconstruction and services, and it will not result in sovereign consolidation. This would be abandonment. And abandonment is the soil in which armed alternatives grow.<\/p>\n
None of these can succeed without political guarantees. One does not need to celebrate Lebanon’s confessional system to understand that change fails when dominant communities conclude that the language of the state is being used to manipulate power against them. If Hezbollah’s military role is to end, Shias in Lebanon must see a future for themselves inside a strong state, not outside it.<\/p>\n
This will all be a slow process. For Washington, this may be less satisfying than the language of decisive moments and offers no catharsis, no spectacle, of settling history through pressure and alignment. But Lebanon has rarely faced that kind of impatience. Often, this has exposed its costs.<\/p>\n
Washington says it wants a strong Lebanese state and a weak Hezbollah. Maybe this happens. But its actions increasingly indicate something else: not the creation of sovereignty, but the management of fractures under Israeli military supremacy.<\/p>\n
This path is unlikely to end in a clean merger or orderly deregulation. There are many armed memories, unresolved issues and regional conflicts in Lebanon. What is more likely to result is a conflict that, once started, proves very difficult to stop.<\/p>\n
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lebanese leaders have gone to Washington for the first direct talks with Israel in more than 30 years, attempting to restore sovereignty under almost impossible terms. according to armistice agreement Lebanon must “effectively demonstrate its ability to assert its sovereignty” as a condition for extending the fragile pause in hostilities, agreed on 16 April. Israel,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":101399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[1029,313,3755,528,608,9305],"class_list":{"0":"post-101398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bible-news","8":"tag-achieved","9":"tag-attacks","10":"tag-bombing","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-lebanon","13":"tag-sovereignty"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101400,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101398\/revisions\/101400"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}