Makram Rabah: Is Lebanon in denial about Hezbollah?

Every time Israeli airstrikes hit targets inside Lebanon, the Lebanese state responds with the same ritualized condemnation of “violations of sovereignty” and “breaches of the ceasefire,” as though the problem begins with the falling missile rather than with the existence of an armed non-state actor that retains the capacity to decide – unilaterally – whether Lebanon goes to war.

The latest round of strikes offered no fundamentally new indicator on the Lebanese front. What they did confirm, however, is something that has been evident since the effective amendment of UN Security Council Resolution 1701: Israel will not hesitate to enforce its interpretation of the agreement in the absence of meaningful Lebanese state compliance. The real issue is that the Lebanese state continues to refuse to acknowledge the essence of 1701—not merely its text, but the understandings that accompanied the ceasefire brokered by US envoy Amos Hochstein between Speaker Nabih Berri and the Israeli side.

According to the leaked annex of that understanding, the responsibility placed upon the Lebanese state was unambiguous: if it failed to prevent Hezbollah from rearming or from mobilizing its weapons across Lebanese territory, Israel would reserve for itself the right to act in a “policing” capacity. In other words, the agreement did not collapse; it simply created a framework in which Israeli enforcement becomes the default outcome of Lebanese inaction.

 

The core problem is not simply the persistence of Hezbollah’s independent arsenal, but the state’s refusal to confront the regional dimension of that arsenal.

From Israel’s perspective, any military presence operating outside the authority of the Lebanese state constitutes a legitimate threat – and therefore a legitimate target. The strikes that have taken place in recent days are entirely consistent with this logic. Far from signaling the breakdown of the ceasefire, they reflect its daily renegotiation through force rather than through the diplomatic formalities that Lebanon’s presidency continues to rely upon.

The core problem is not simply the persistence of Hezbollah’s independent arsenal, but the state’s refusal to confront the regional dimension of that arsenal. When Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem openly declares that the party will enter a confrontation with Israel if Iran comes under attack, the notion of Lebanese neutrality becomes not only implausible, but institutionally dishonest. The most likely scenario in which Hezbollah would deploy what remains of its military capacity is not in response to Israeli strikes on Lebanese soil – as demonstrated by the party’s restraint following the assassination of senior commanders – but in reaction to a US or Israeli strike on Iran itself.

Lebanon, in other words, is not teetering on the edge of escalation because of a border dispute or an isolated security incident. It is exposed to the risk of regional war because a supposed “domestic” political actor has made it clear that the country may serve as an extension of Iran’s deterrence architecture. Yet the Lebanese state continues to behave as though the current crisis were a conventional interstate conflict, issuing condemnations of Israeli action while declining to address the conditions that render Lebanese territory a forward operating platform in a potential US-Iran confrontation.

This posture of denial is all the more troubling in light of the commitments reportedly made by the Lebanese Armed Forces to the United States. In exchange for financial and logistical support, the army has been granted a four-to-five-month window within which to begin dismantling or containing Hezbollah’s military infrastructure. This timeline is not a procedural detail; it is a strategic deadline. Failure to meet it risks effectively outsourcing the disarmament process to Israeli airpower, conducted incrementally and unilaterally.

Herein lies the central contradiction of Lebanese state policy. On the one hand, Beirut appeals to the international community for assistance in strengthening its sovereign institutions. On the other, it declines to undertake the political decisions necessary to render that sovereignty meaningful. A state cannot credibly request support for its armed forces while simultaneously tolerating the presence of an armed organization that has publicly signaled its willingness to embroil the country in a war on behalf of a foreign power.

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To persist in the protocol-driven condemnation of Israeli strikes, while refusing to confront the fact that Hezbollah may not hesitate to open a Lebanese front if Iran is attacked, is not a strategy of national defense. It is an abdication of responsibility. Neutrality is not proclaimed in communiqués; it is enforced through the state’s monopoly over the instruments of war. Any discourse on sovereignty that fails to begin with this premise remains performative rather than operational.

Ultimately, Lebanon faces not only the erosion of a ceasefire agreement, but the erosion of statehood itself. So long as its political leadership refuses to acknowledge the elephant in the room—that Resolution 1701 cannot be selectively implemented, and that weapons operating beyond state control bind Lebanon to regional conflicts it cannot afford—the country risks discovering, at the moment of a US or Israeli strike on Iran, that it has already been drawn into the war. Not by necessity, but by choice.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Maghrebi.org. Makram Rabah is a Lebanese author and lecturer at the American university of Beirut, who writes for Al Arabiya. You can follow him on X @MakramRabah.

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