{"id":141,"date":"2025-12-07T18:48:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T18:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/?p=141"},"modified":"2026-02-17T16:37:56","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T16:37:56","slug":"as-the-u-s-deadline-for-disarming-hezbollah-approaches-lebanon-remains-deadlocked-on-next-steps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/2025\/12\/07\/as-the-u-s-deadline-for-disarming-hezbollah-approaches-lebanon-remains-deadlocked-on-next-steps\/","title":{"rendered":"As the U.S. deadline for disarming Hezbollah approaches, Lebanon remains deadlocked on next steps"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. set a deadline for the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah by the end of December. But as the deadline nears, it is unclear what Lebanon will do, given the challenges of disarming the group and popular support for resistance to Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lebanese
Lebanese President, Joseph Aoun, meets with U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, in the presence of U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon, Lisa Johnson, Beirut, July 7, 2025. (Photo: Lebanese Presidency Office\/APA Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On November 23, Israel assassinated Hezbollah\u2019s chief of staff, Haitham Tabtabai<\/a>, before the one-year anniversary of the signing of the \u201cceasefire\u201d between Israel and Lebanon could be commemorated. That so-called agreement can now be declared null and void.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hezbollah ceased fire, but Israel never did. In the year since signing it on November 27, 2024, Israel has escalated its daily attacks on southern Lebanon, the Beqaa Valley, and Beirut, recording over 4,500 violations<\/a> of Lebanon\u2019s land, air, and sea borders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The assassination of Tabtabai is the culmination of a year-long process of periodic Israeli provocations meant to draw Hezbollah back into an open confrontation. But Hezbollah, weakened by Israel\u2019s successive attacks since 2023, has not responded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the lead up the November 2024 agreement, the Lebanese resistance movement weathered several blows, from the infamous exploding \u201cpager\u201d attacks<\/a> to the assassination of Hezbollah\u2019s iconic secretary general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah<\/a>, alongside most of the party\u2019s military leadership. The escalation happening today bears the same features. The tactics are familiar, the aim is still the same, but the players and the scale have shifted: the Americans are now directly implicated in the dynamic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, in addition to the ongoing Israeli attacks, Hezbollah faces the greatest pressure it has experienced since its formation, this time centering around a singular Israeli-American condition: disarmament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In August of this year, caving to American demands, the Lebanese government agreed to disarm Hezbollah before the deadline set by the U.S. \u2014 the end of December. With less than a month left before the Lebanese government has to answer to the Americans, and as Hezbollah declares that it will not hand over its arms, all eyes are now on what the government might do \u2014 and what further escalation Israel might undertake to force Hezbollah\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lead up to the disarmament \u2018proposal\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It was quite the busy summer for American diplomats, especially Tom Barrack, the U.S. special envoy to Syria and former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, who was reportedly put in charge of Lebanon\u2019s \u201cdossier\u201d in May 2025. Barrack was joined by Morgan Ortagus, the deputy presidential special envoy to the Middle East, on back-and-forth visits to Lebanon throughout the summer, culminating in their delivery of a U.S. disarmament proposal<\/a> on August 7, 2025, two days after the Lebanese government\u2019s historic decision on August 5 to disarm<\/a> the organization.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the U.S. proposal was much less a proposal<\/a> than it was a threat. The plan, described in a copy of a cabinet agenda reviewed by Reuters and briefed by U.S. envoys, ties Hezbollah\u2019s disarmament to a phased Israeli withdrawal from five hilltops in south Lebanon alongside the granting of reconstruction aid; otherwise, Lebanon can forget about the international guarantees meant to secure a ceasefire. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The American proposal also imposed a tight deadline on the government: to begin the disarmament process on September 1 and complete it by December 31.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the government\u2019s decision, the Lebanese Army was instructed to develop a plan and submit it by the beginning of September. The day after the announcement, an 11-year-old child was killed by an Israeli airstrike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On August 25, 2025, Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s office released a statement congratulating the Lebanese government<\/a> on its \u201chistoric\u201d decision, claiming that once disarmament has taken place, the Israeli army would consider \u201creciprocal measures,\u201d including a \u201cphased\u201d reduction of Israeli presence \u201cin coordination with the US-led security mechanism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What disarming Hezbollah entails<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Disarming Hezbollah would mean stripping away all means of resistance to the Israeli occupation, thus reducing the group to just another passive political party in Lebanon\u2019s overcrowded political landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government\u2019s plan includes taking over all weapons, from heavy artillery down to light weapons, and dismantling the entire military infrastructure that liberated southern Lebanon in 2000 and acted as a deterrent against future full-scale wars and invasions of the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simultaneously, the Lebanese Army launched a campaign to disarm Palestinian groups in refugee camps. The first stop was Burj al-Barajneh in Beirut\u2019s southern suburbs, where Palestinians reportedly handed over<\/a> \u201cillegal arms\u201d that had entered the camps, only 48 hours earlier. That handover offered an early glimpse of how the government intended to handle disarmament on the ground; the army had sent a truck or two to collect a few rifles and guns \u2014 very light weapons \u2014 handed over willingly by camp residents. No heavy arms, if any existed, ever appeared, thus producing a performative, obviously staged scene that was widely mocked<\/a> on social media and seen as inconsequential rather than a serious first step toward disarmament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The push to disarm Hezbollah, and the willingness to risk internal fighting, is itself a sign that Hezbollah still threatens the occupation. How far the Lebanese government is willing to go reveals the other side of the American coin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reactions to the government decision split into two striking positions: one hailing the move as a historic first step toward salvaging a broken state, a view which ignores Israel\u2019s continued occupation of southern Lebanese territories after the ceasefire; and another that refused the plan outright, and not only from Hezbollah supporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On September 5, 2025, the Lebanese Army formally presented its plan to the government. Hours after the session, Minister of Information Paul Morkos announced that the plan had been adopted \u2014 but that its components would remain confidential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following that meeting, the disarmament debate largely disappeared from public view. The subject was, it seemed, not-so-safely tucked under the rug.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One element of the ceasefire, effective as of November 27, 2024, required the Lebanese Army to deploy across the southern Litani River, and for Hezbollah to withdraw north of the river. Hezbollah agreed to be disarmed south of the Litani, and the transition there was relatively smooth. The army reportedly found weapons caches<\/a> in several locations and destroyed them. Since the ceasefire, the army has routinely \u201cdetonated remnants of the war,\u201d with civilians regularly hearing explosions on top of Israel\u2019s near-daily strikes in the south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why detonate these weapons instead of using them? Tom Barrack already answered in an unhinged interview<\/a> with Hadley Gamble published on September 22, 2025: the Lebanese Army should not be equipped enough to fight Israel, only to fight Hezbollah internally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. role<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In that interview Barrack was unusually candid for an American diplomat. He said that although the U.S. was requesting the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah, Washington did not intend to equip the Lebanese Army in a way that would allow it to fight Israel. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to arm them\u2026 so they can fight Israel? I don\u2019t think so, so you\u2019re arming them so they can fight their own people, Hezbollah. Hezbollah is our enemy,\u201d Barrack said<\/a>. Honesty can be refreshing sometimes, even though ten days earlier, the Pentagon had approved $14.2 million<\/a> in military aid for the Lebanese army. But what would $14.2 million do in the face of the billions<\/a> given to Israel yearly?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the disarmament process in Lebanese politics remained deadlocked, at least publicly. The Lebanese government had been humiliated<\/a> on August 26 when, a few weeks earlier, it acted on a deal that promised reciprocal moves from the occupation, only to realize that what Barrack has been saying<\/a> from the start is true: America cannot compel Israel to do anything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrack had returned to Beirut at the end of August, with Senator Lindsey Graham tagging along this time, and said that now that the Lebanese side had acted, he could not guarantee that Israel would act in turn. \u201cYou gotta hold your end of the bargain,\u201d he said, even if Israel failed to reciprocate, and he urged Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah by the end of the year with no guarantees that Israel would stop violating the ceasefire or end its occupation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During that same visit, his Western arrogance spilled over: he called Lebanese journalists<\/a> \u201canimalistic\u201d and demanded they be \u201ccivilized.\u201d At the same press conference, he insisted, dismissively, that \u201cthe idea of disarming Hezbollah did not come from me, it came from you, the Lebanese people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senator Lindsey Graham said bluntly: \u201cIsrael\u2019s never going to look at Lebanon differently until you do something different. And that is disarm the enemy of the Israeli people. So don\u2019t ask me any questions about what Israel is going to do until you disarm Hezbollah.\u201d He also warned<\/a> that whether Israelis withdraw \u201cdepends on what you do,\u201d and insisted the reason to disarm Hezbollah is \u201cbecause it\u2019s best for you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Israeli strikes are increasing daily in the country. They\u2019re widening the geographical scope and the targets: massacres are back on the table with the strike on the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh that killed 13 teenagers<\/a> playing football.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every once in a while, the Christian far right makes a comment about how it\u2019s all Hezbollah\u2019s fault and that it should be disarmed. Other voices lowered the temperature of their rhetoric; the Lebanese Army released a statement<\/a> condemning the actions of the \u201cIsraeli enemy,\u201d saying that Israel\u2019s actions are obstructing the completion of the army\u2019s deployment in the south (by literally occupying the land). Washington got upset and canceled<\/a> the Commander General Rudolf Haykal\u2019s visit to the U.S capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conditions that created resistance<\/strong> remain<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a bigger picture here that Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Lindsey Graham fail to recognize: people will never cease to resist. The conditions Israel is creating today in southern Lebanon are the same conditions its created decades ago that led to the formation of Hezbollah. Lebanese resistance will continue to take on different names, but its essence will remain the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only a month before the government moved to disarm Hezbollah, people from the border village of Aita al-Shaab sent a letter<\/a> to the president of Lebanon, Joseph Aoun, holding the state accountable for their security. Dated July 25, 2025, it warned that, \u201cIn light of this repeated neglect, we clearly declare that we are considering taking future steps to protect ourselves and our land, ensuring our dignity, security, and right to life.\u201d The letter concluded: \u201cOur security is not a luxury\u2026 but a right. Mercy to our martyrs, healing to our wounded, and freedom to every land that resists.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arms can be taken away, of course. But the conditions that gave rise to their need remain. Disarming Hezbollah under foreign stress will not extinguish resistance: it simply clears space for other actors to organize and continue the same struggle. The people of Aita al-Shaab made that clear.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lebanese President, Joseph Aoun, meets with U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, in the presence of U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon, Lisa Johnson, Beirut, July 7, 2025. (Photo: Lebanese Presidency Office\/APA Images)<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english-articles","tag-mondoweiss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152,"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}