Hezbollah is, more often than not, engaged in pure propaganda. It lies, accuses, threatens, manipulates, and evades. It lies when it claims that the cease-fire agreement with Israel, which it approved through Nabih Berri, refers to its disarmament only south of the Litani and not across the whole country. It accuses anyone who simply asks it to respect this agreement and to stop considering itself above the law and the state of being a “Zionist agent.”
It threatens to spark a civil war if authorities implement the agreement in question, a demand supported by the majority in Parliament, government, and the population. It manipulates its community by presenting its disarmament as an existential issue for all Shiites, making any member of the community who opposes this line a traitor and anyone who calls for its disarmament an enemy. And it evades the issue by systematically deflecting the question so as not to have to address it substantively.
In private, Hezbollah admits it no longer wants to wage war with Israel and that it has been greatly weakened by the last confrontation, and then asks why its arsenal, which now no longer poses a threat to the enemy, is receiving so much attention.
Not only does it see no contradiction between wanting to keep its weapons and no longer wanting to fight Israel (so what are they for then?), but it also pretends not to understand its enemy’s intentions.
The Iranian axis is seeking a long-term truce throughout the region. It no longer has the means to wage open war with Israel and needs time to recover from its wounds and rebuild its forces. But Israel does not want a truce. It wants to get rid of the axis once and for all and knows it has an opportunity to do so.
The issue is not whether Hezbollah currently poses a threat to the Israeli state, but whether it could do so again in the future.
Many other flawed arguments used by the party could be cited — such as the famous “but everyone is armed in Lebanon” or “the army cannot fight Israel” — but that is not our topic. Rather, it is to highlight the fact that, beyond all Hezbollah’s misinformation and manipulations, its supporters raise two legitimate questions that need to be answered.
The first: who can guarantee that Israel will stop attacking them if Hezbollah disarms? The Israeli state occupies part of Lebanese territory and dominates its skies without challenge. Why would it give up these advantages, regardless of whether Hezbollah is present or not?
Israel’s behavior in the region, especially toward Syria, is not reassuring.
In Syria, Israel is faced with a new regime that declares on all fronts that it is not hostile to it, and yet Tel Aviv reveals itself to be both uncompromising and greedy, to the point of killing off any chance of reaching a security agreement.
It refuses to withdraw from territory seized after the fall of the Assad regime and even wants three southern Syrian provinces to be completely demilitarized.
In this context, even if Beirut is ready to sign a security agreement or even a peace treaty, how can it be guaranteed that such an agreement will not be entirely in Israel’s favor? How can we guarantee that no Israeli soldier will remain on our soil, or that no part of Lebanon will be inaccessible to its inhabitants?
The only tool left to us is diplomacy, but diplomacy has its limits, especially in a time where only the rule of force prevails, especially against a state that, since Oct. 7, has disregarded every law.
So we must be honest and say that even if Hezbollah agrees to disarm, we have no guarantee that Israel will hold up its end of the bargain. But we must add that if Hezbollah does not disarm, we are guaranteed that Lebanon will suffer one or more wars from which it will not recover.
In this way, Hezbollah supporters are asking the right question, but they are also offering the wrong answer.
Even if one admits Israel is, in itself, a threat to Lebanon, weapons are not an asset to face it; rather, they are a weakness. They no longer provide any deterrence; they make Lebanon a “legitimate” target in the eyes of the international community; they reinforce internal tensions; and they weaken our cause with the only countries that might pressure Israel to change its attitude toward us.
The second question: who will defend the Shiite community if Hezbollah is no longer capable of doing so? Many Shiites now see Hezbollah as their lifeline. They fear that, if disarmed, they will be attacked by Israel, by other forces within Lebanon, or by the new Syrian government.
They also fear once again being marginalized in Lebanon and losing their voice, since, on paper, the institutions grant them limited power. These anxieties are legitimate, though in part manufactured by the party’s own propaganda.
No one in Lebanon wants to target the Shiite community, and both Joseph Aoun and Nawaf Salam have repeatedly expressed goodwill toward it. But at the same time, no one appears ready to revise the distribution of power to make it fairer, particularly toward Shiites.
Hezbollah's opponents say: “As long as you have your arms, it’s impossible to negotiate.” Its supporters reply: “If we lay down our arms, we’ll have nothing left to negotiate.”
The more the Shiite community ties its fate to that of Hezbollah, the more the rift between it and the rest of Lebanon widens. As long as it does not realize that Hezbollah’s disarmament is primarily in its own interest, dialogue will be very difficult or even impossible. But for it to realize this, the other side must still provide a real alternative…
