The decisions Cabinet, adopted on Monday during a meeting at Baabda Presidential Palace, concerning Hezbollah — declaring its military and security activities illegal and ordering the army and other legal forces to immediately proceed, including by force if necessary, to disarm the militia — mark a small but significant revolution, when judged against Lebanon’s usual pace and typical public authority initiative.
One might almost go as far as to praise the executive branch for showing such courage, if it weren’t for the fact that these measures, in reality, fall short of what is needed in light of the situation that the militia once again created. On the night from Sunday to Monday, it opened a front in support of its Iranian patron.
What does it really mean to decree that, from now on, the military and security actions of the Shiite militia will be considered illegal? Were they not illegal before?
They always were, except that a large part of the political and ruling class took pleasure — out of ignorance or malice — in repeating a gross lie, which they ended up believing themselves.
It was claimed that the ministerial (or general policy) statements of the successive governments since the end of the Civil War legitimized the “Lebanese resistance to Israeli occupation.”
This was a sinister farce, designed to make people believe that a ministerial statement — which is nothing more than a lengthy presentation of the government’s program based on which it obtains or fails to gain the confidence of Parliament, — carries the force of law.
Even if it did, a simple general policy statement could not take precedence over the Constitution.
Is there any country whose Constitution allows a militia to wage recurrent and devastating wars against a neighboring country (1993, 1996, 2006, 2023, and 2026) or to brutally suppress a revolution just in the service of another regime (2012 to 2024)?
To carry out bloody coups in order to force the government to reverse sovereign decisions (2008)? Or to deploy “black shirts” in the streets to intimidate political opponents and provoke a shift in the parliamentary majority (2011)?
The truth is that for more than 40 years, a culture of illegality has been allowed to develop around Hezbollah. It is a culture that the Lebanese state and the ruling class have almost never sought to counter, or have done so only timidly, even after Syria’s withdrawal in April 2005.
At the time (2005-2006), the arrows of the Lebanese sovereignist camp, united within the March 14 Alliance, were almost all aimed at the Assad regime, while efforts were made to spare Hezbollah, despite its alleged involvement in the wave of political assassinations within this coalition. The containment strategy that President Joseph Aoun has adopted since 2025 towards Hezbollah is therefore nothing new.
This approach was practiced 20 years earlier by numerous officials who, when asked by foreign diplomats about the failure to implement Security Council Resolution 1559 — which called for the immediate disarmament of militias — insisted it had to be handled delicately, so as not to “offend” Hezbollah and its supporters base.
This “caution” did nothing to prevent the militia from triggering the destructive summer 2006 war with Israel — the very conflict after which Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah famously said, “If I had known…” (that the Israelis would strike that hard!).
But there is something else that also illustrates the inadequacy of the government’s decisions. Many commentators believe that the distinction between the political and military wings of Hezbollah is often artificial.
As a result, isolating military activities while keeping the party’s other structures intact, and above all, allowing ministers from a party that has just defied the state so blatantly to remain in the government, could give the impression that this is more a show of strength than a genuine desire for change.
Without going so far as to label Hezbollah a “terrorist” group, as many wanted it, the party could have been entirely dissolved — as happened in the 1990s with the Lebanese Forces for far less — and reformed under a new name, with its remaining members agreeing to operate as a more or less regular political party.
The fact remains that the measures taken by Cabinet are undeniably a step in the right direction. This is all the more true given that the ruling class is not alone in being criticized for waking up too slowly from its lethargy. Lebanese public opinion as a whole is no better.
For obvious political reasons, Michel Aoun and Gebran Bassil’s Free Patriotic Movement once threw half of the Christian voters into the arms of Hezbollah, which was an unexpected gift for the latter.
Later, between 2013 and 2017, the entire identity-based fringe of the Christian community, so lenient towards the odious Assad regime, wanted to see Hezbollah as a powerful asset against the Sunni jihadists.
And, last but not least, a large part of the Thawra movement of Oct. 17, 2019, centered around the dogmatic left, contributed significantly to the movement’s downfall by thinking it could make a pact with Hezbollah, whose thugs on motorcycles literally crushed the demonstrators.
In the Lebanese collective consciousness, confronting Hezbollah has long been considered a dangerous game that undermines civil peace.
Doing nothing in the face of decades-long hostage-situation is even more dangerous today.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour and translated by Joelle El Khoury.
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