It’s been almost a year since Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that arguably held more power in Lebanon than the government itself, signed a ceasefire to end a ferocious two-month long war. The deal couldn’t have come at a better time; thousands of Israeli air and artillery strikes had pulverised southern Lebanon, Hezbollah’s traditional base of operations, leading to a displacement crisis and killing close to 4,000 Lebanese. Whole swaths of northern Israel had been vacated due to Hezbollah missile attacks, forcing the Israeli government of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to spend money on tens of thousands of civilians bunking in hotel rooms. But the agreement is wearing thin. The ceasefire is really a ceasefire in name only. Will it hold?
What Hezbollah and Lebanese officials call violations of the ceasefire, Israel calls self-defence
Israel continues to strike targets in Lebanon, both in the south and above the Litani River, in what it claims is a self-defence measure to prevent Hezbollah from rearming. Last weekend, four people were killed in the southern Lebanese town of Kfarsir. Before that strike, the UN Human Rights office stated that more than 100 Lebanese civilians have died in Israeli attacks since the November 2024 deal was signed. The situation is getting intolerable for Lebanese politicians. President Joseph Aoun, a former army chief himself, went so far as to order the Lebanese army to confront Israel in the event of similar events in the future. The fact that Lebanon’s military capacity couldn’t possibly match up to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is beside the point. The larger issue is that Israel’s military actions are alienating a Lebanese government that is, if not friendly, than at least not adversarial.
What Hezbollah and Lebanese officials call violations of the ceasefire, Israel calls self-defense. Despite Israeli troops pulling out of the small portions of southern Lebanon they briefly controlled during the war, the IDF still holds five separate points on the Lebanese side of the UN-demarcated Blue Line, which is technically a breach of the terms. The Israelis, however, are tying a full withdrawal from Lebanon to the Lebanese government’s demobilisation of Hezbollah. And Israel has no intention of stopping the airstrikes as long as Hezbollah is holding weapons.
‘The Lebanese government’s commitment to disarm Hezbollah and remove it from southern Lebanon must be implemented,’ Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Sunday. ‘Maximum enforcement will continue and even intensify – we will not allow any threat to the residents of the north.’
The Donald Trump administration, which inherited the Joe Biden-era ceasefire agreement, finds itself in a vice. Tom Barrack, the US Ambassador to Turkey who doubles as Trump’s special envoy for Syria and Lebanon, warns that Hezbollah still has a stockpile of at least 15,000 rockets and is replacing some of the arms it lost during last year’s war. During a conference last week, Barrack advised the Lebanese government to sit down with Israel and work on a normalisation pact, as if establishing normal diplomatic relations would magically fix all the problems between these two states. It also happens to be a recommendation that is borderline pointless, since Lebanese officials will find it hard to rationalise normalisation talks as long as Israeli bombs are killing Lebanese citizens on Lebanese territory. To do anything less would be to jeopardise the credibility of the relatively new administration in the eyes of the people it’s supposed to represent.
It’s difficult to see what Washington can do fix things. Hezbollah has no incentive to part with their small arms, rockets, launchers and explosives if Israel continues to attack. Israel, in turn, has no incentive to stop treating Lebanon as its own personal piñata as long as Hezbollah refuses to disarm and transition strictly into a non-violent political party (and that’s even assuming Israel would support Hezbollah participating in Lebanese politics to begin with). The maelstrom is further complicated by the Gulf states, who would normally be called upon to fundraise Lebanon’s reconstruction but aren’t likely to write any cheques if they don’t feel comfortable that the war is truly over.
This is not to say the situation isn’t entirely negative. The resumption of full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah, which many observers assumed would occur shortly after the agreement came into force, hasn’t come to pass. Northern Israel has seen a total of one rocket attack from Lebanon. The Israeli population that left for the country’s major cities during hostilities is starting to come back to the farms and small villages that populate Israel’s northern communities. Hezbollah has cooperated far more than previously assessed, and the Lebanese army, constantly strapped for cash and dealing with resource constraints, has proven itself to be a committed enforcer of the deal’s provisions. The writ of the Lebanese state has expanded, and Lebanese troops who previously viewed the southern portion of the country as a no-go zone are now regularly deployed there. Last but not least, the Lebanese government is no longer acting in an interim capacity; its president is a leading promoter of demobilising Hezbollah and bringing all arms under the state’s control.
But these glimmers of hope can’t hide the fact that the situation risks spinning out of control. It’s the geopolitical equivalent of the chicken-and-egg problem. Except this time, the answer will determine whether Lebanon stays in a grey zone between war and peace, descends into another cycle of violence or gets the opportunity to rebuild.
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