Hezbollah is down, but not out

The Lebanese militant group has resisted calls to lay down all its arms, risking a return to war with Israel.

Lebanon’s government made a commitment a year ago to disarm Hezbollah, after a ceasefire ended a yearlong conflict between Israel and the powerful Lebanese paramilitary group. But the pace of disarmament has frustrated Israeli and US officials, and despite the truce, the Israeli military has bombed what it says are Hezbollah targets on a near-daily basis.

Though Hezbollah says it has pulled back its armed fighters from the area near Israel’s border, and lost much of its arsenal during the war, Israeli and US officials say the group is attempting to rebuild. That is raising the possibility of a renewed Israeli offensive.

Envoys from Israel and Lebanon met for direct talks this past week for the second time this month, a rare encounter held under the auspices of a US-led ceasefire monitoring committee established after the war. US officials have said they want the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah by the end of the year, but it is not clear if it can.

On December 20, Nawaf Salam, the Lebanese prime minister, said the government was “days away” from finishing a process of disarmament south of the Litani River, long seen as a key dividing line in Lebanon, and then would turn its attention to the rest of the country.

Moving too fast without concessions from Israel — including an end to its attacks and withdrawal from Lebanese territory — also poses risks for Lebanon internally, Lebanese analysts say. Hezbollah is not just a militia; it is also a political party in the Lebanese parliament, with deep roots in the country’s Shiite Muslim community. The possibility of a return to war
depends in part on how much Hezbollah has rearmed and regrouped since the end of the war.

Hezbollah is down, but not out

Hezbollah began firing drones and rockets into Israel after the October 7, 2023, assault on southern Israel, which was led by its Palestinian ally, Hamas, and ignited the war in the Gaza Strip. As fighting between Hezbollah and Israel escalated, more than one million people in Lebanon fled their homes, Israeli border communities became ghost towns, and at least 4,000 were killed, mostly in Lebanon.

Backed by Iran, Hezbollah grew so powerful over the years that it eclipsed Lebanon’s own military, with sophisticated weaponry and thousands of battle-hardened fighters. Its arsenal, believed to include scores of guided missiles, was central to the militia’s self-styled role as Lebanon’s defender against Israel, which has attacked the country many times over the past 50 years.

But the group was battered by the recent conflict, losing thousands of fighters and its revered leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated by Israel.

Since then, Hezbollah has not substantially rebuilt its forces in southern Lebanon, close to the border with Israel, according to officials from Israel, Lebanon and the United Nations. The three officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive subject.

Hezbollah has said it no longer maintains an “armed presence” south of the Litani River. Israeli officials argue that Hezbollah was only driven from that area because of Israel’s vigilance. It has bombarded Lebanon on a near-daily basis since the ceasefire and still occupies several sites inside Lebanese territory, despite having initially agreed to withdraw.

North of the Litani, however, Hezbollah’s forces remain entrenched, the Israeli and Lebanese officials said. In June, the Israeli military bombed what it said were underground factories near Beirut where Hezbollah was trying to build drones. And, last month, Israeli fighter jets bombed an apartment near Beirut, assassinating Haytham Ali Tabatabai, Hezbollah’s top military commander.

But Hezbollah’s efforts to rearm have faced challenges, as the regional alliance that backed it has crumbled.

Iran, Hezbollah’s main patron, sustained heavy blows from Israel during a 12-day-war in June. It has still managed to funnel tens of millions of dollars to the group since January, largely through a network of informal money handlers in Lebanon, according to the US Treasury Department. But analysts say that is not enough to cover all of Hezbollah’s costs.

And Bashar Assad, its ally in Syria, was deposed last year, severing a key supply line that Hezbollah used to smuggle in money and weapons.

Naim Kassem, the group’s leader, argued in a televised speech last weekend that full disarmament was out of the question for the time being. “This would mean taking away the power of the resistance,” Kassem said. “This is an American-Israeli demand.”

Talal Atrissi, a Lebanon-based analyst close to Hezbollah, said the group was “attempting to build capabilities” even as Israel continued to attack its members.

“We are in a race between building capabilities and considering war on the one hand, and between preventing war and finding solutions for Lebanon on the other,” Atrissi said.

Will Israel escalate?

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has suggested he would prefer that Lebanon disarm Hezbollah, rather than see a return to war. But since Hamas’ surprise attack in October 2023, Israel
has sought to nip any regional threats in the bud.

“The lesson of October 7 became Israel’s new security doctrine: We don’t turn a blind eye to emerging threats,” said Tamir Hayman, a former Israeli military intelligence chief. “The idea is it’s better to risk an escalation while your enemy is weak rather than wait until it gets stronger.”

Hayman argued that the Lebanese government had not moved quickly enough to exploit the “window of opportunity” to disarm Hezbollah. A new Israeli military campaign, he said, might offer Lebanon’s government more time and momentum by weakening Hezbollah further.

Joseph Aoun, the Lebanese president, and Salam, the prime minister, say their government is working to disarm Hezbollah as fast as possible. But by continuing to bombard Lebanon, Lebanese officials and analysts argue, Israel is bolstering Hezbollah’s resistance narrative and giving the group justification to cling to its arms.

The Lebanese government is desperate to get its hands on the billions of dollars in financial aid dangled by Western and Gulf nations if they can successfully disarm Hezbollah. To do that, they say,
the country’s US-backed military needs more resources and funding from international donors.

“We want to extend our authority over all our territory,” Salam said in an interview in August with The New York Times.

The US military said Lebanese soldiers had removed nearly 10,000 rockets and about 400 missiles as part of the government’s disarmament initiative, which covers Hezbollah and other smaller armed Palestinian factions.

The Lebanese government is keen to demonstrate that its efforts to disarm Hezbollah are proving effective. During US-brokered meetings with Israeli officials in December, Lebanese military officers showed video of their forces raiding weapons sites, according to a UN official.

The UN official and one of the Israeli officials also said that Israel had shared some intelligence with the Lebanese military to help identify buildings where Hezbollah has weapons caches.

That kind of cooperation is rare, but while Lebanon and Israel remain deeply mistrustful of one another, they see a joint interest in working to quash Hezbollah, said Lina Khatib, a visiting scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School.