Lebanon is burdened by problems accumulated over decades: political and economic crises, sectarian divisions, and corruption that has hollowed out the state from within and deprived citizens and depositors of their savings. Addressing these problems is an urgent priority for the Lebanese. Yet any remedy requires a state capable of carrying out very basic responsibilities: exercising exclusive authority over its entire territory.
When the Lebanese rose up on 17 October 2019, views differed even among the protesters themselves. Some argued that the question of Hezbollah’s weapons should be set aside so that the struggle could focus on corruption and the ruling class. Others maintained that none of Lebanon’s crises could be resolved before the militias were disarmed, foremost among them Hezbollah. Subsequent events proved the latter view right.
Today, the same debate has resurfaced in a different form. After the war of 2024 and the war of 2026, which shows no sign of ending, the same questions have resurfaced: reconstruction, the return of more than one million displaced southerners, Israeli withdrawal from the territory it has occupied, and the search for a way to deal with Hezbollah’s arsenal.
The core problem
A look at recent history is enough to recall the nature of the problem and the disasters it has brought. Israel withdrew from Lebanon on 25 May 2000, and the justification for the weapons of the “resistance” disappeared. Resistance should be a means, not an end. Events, however, took another course. The Syrian and Iranian regimes invoked Israel's occupation of the Shebaa Farms as a pretext for Hezbollah retaining its weapons. For decades, both Beirut and Damascus never formally agreed on whether Shebaa was Lebanese or Syrian territory. Meanwhile, Hezbollah kept its weapons.
Those weapons were later implicated in the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, followed by the killings of political and media figures. Lebanese leaders then gathered around a dialogue table to discuss the future of Hezbollah’s arsenal. While the party’s secretary-general sat with them, promising a quiet summer and a serious discussion of the weapons issue, Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers, and the 2006 war erupted. Hezbollah initiated the confrontation, and Israel responded by devastating Lebanon and its infrastructure.
The weapons of the “resistance” were subsequently turned inward, against the Lebanese themselves, and used to impose Hezbollah’s agenda on the state. Hassan Nasrallah, the party’s secretary-general at the time, declared that the purpose of those weapons was to protect Hezbollah. Israel was no longer the justification. The weapons had become both the means of power and the reason for preserving it.
