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By Tom O'Connor
Deputy Editor, National Security and Foreign Policy
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With the Middle East in the throes of its most expansive war in decades, Lebanon is once again caught in the crossfire as Israel pursues a renewed offensive in response to Hezbollah’s strikes in support of its Iranian Islamic Republic ally.
But the conflict poses a risk potentially more dire for the Lebanese state than at any point since the 15-year bloody civil war that tore through the nation until 1990. Since then, a precarious power-sharing system has prevailed across sectarian lines, informally allowing Hezbollah—an Iran-backed Shiite Muslim political and paramilitary group—to retain a standing army and vast arsenal of advanced weapons to rival that of the Lebanese Armed Forces.
After three Israel-Lebanon wars involving Hezbollah, the latest sparked by the Palestinian Hamas movement’s attack against Israel in October 2023, Israel is now looking to capitalize on regional upheaval by permanently disarming the group—which, like Hamas, both Israel and the United States consider a terrorist organization.
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And while the Israel Defense Forces has already intensified cross-border operations in response to the group’s first rocket fire since a November 2024 truce, President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are placing pressure on the Lebanese government to play a decisive role in restricting Hezbollah’s military activities by empowering the LAF to disarm them.
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Karim Émile Bitar, an associate professor at Saint Joseph University of Beirut and associate research fellow at the Institute for International and Strategic Affairs in Paris, warned of “serious risks in expecting the LAF to confront Hezbollah directly.”
“The army remains the last genuinely cross-sectarian institution in Lebanon and one of the very few that still enjoys a broad degree of public trust,” Bitar told Newsweek. “Using it to fight Hezbollah could expose it to a dangerous internal fracture. Hezbollah is not simply a militia but also a major political actor with a large social base within the Shiite community, and many Lebanese soldiers themselves come from that community.”
“If the LAF were ordered to engage Hezbollah militarily, it could create a ‘double bind’ situation for the army: Either it obeys political directives and risks internal division and even mutiny, or it refuses and undermines the authority of the state,” Bitar said. “Either scenario would weaken one of the last pillars of national cohesion.”
A Tale of Two Armies
The LAF was rebuilt into its current form in 1991, about a year after the Taif Agreement put an end to the Lebanese Civil War and called for the disbanding of all militias and surrender of heavy weapons. However, that accord allowed Hezbollah to remain as a “resistance force” engaged in attempts to expel Israeli forces, which invaded the country in 1982 in a bid to uproot Palestinian militias operating in southern Lebanon.
The IDF withdrew in 2000, with its allied South Lebanon Army quickly collapsing, allowing Hezbollah to retain a powerful presence across the south and in other majority-Shiite Muslim areas. In 2006, war returned as Israel and Hezbollah engaged in a monthlong conflict set off by a Hezbollah border ambush of Israeli troops. The United Nations Security Council resolution that ended that conflict called for the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, along with the withdrawal of the IDF and deployment of the LAF in the south. Yet in practice, Hezbollah expanded its support base and amassed more weapons, while Israel routinely penetrated Lebanese airspace and waters.
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After years of intermittent clashes, the war in Gaza brought the deadliest period of fighting since 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah, which suffered extensive losses and ultimately signed a ceasefire in November 2024. Israel continued to regularly strike across Lebanon as regional conflict persisted, with Hezbollah rejoining the battle in response to the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the recent U.S.-Israeli strikes that brought direct war to Iran.
The LAF has thus far sought to remain neutral in the conflict. But Netanyahu has added pressure, recently warning the Lebanese government that “Hezbollah’s aggression will bring catastrophic consequences upon Lebanon” if the group is not disarmed.
But even a Lebanese government whose top figures have openly called for reining in Hezbollah—including President Joseph Aoun, former commander of the LAF, and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam—risks the unraveling of Lebanese unity.
“The risks of using the Lebanese army against Hezbollah in the middle of an ongoing regional war are extremely high...not only military risks but political and communal ones,” Amal Saad, a lecturer at Cardiff University’s School of Law and Politics in Wales, told Newsweek. “The army has historically tried to stay out of direct confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel, and the reason is obvious: Once the army is seen not as a national institution but as an instrument in an internal anti-Hezbollah campaign, it risks fracturing its legitimacy, especially in Shiite areas, and potentially reopening the specter of internal strife.”
Saad, a leading expert on Hezbollah and a veteran Lebanese scholar with direct experience instructing senior LAF officials, warned such a rift may extend to other sects such as Sunni Muslims and Christians, recalling how mid- and high-ranking LAF personnel of various backgrounds routinely referred to Israel as “the enemy.”
The LAF and Hezbollah have cooperated in the past, on both sides of the Lebanese-Syrian border to battle the Islamic State militant group after it first took root there in 2014. There is also precedent for Lebanese troops refusing to disarm Hezbollah amid soaring tensions. “The idea of large sections of the army effectively doing Israel’s dirty work for it, in the midst of an Israeli invasion no less, is absurd,” Saad said. “And, needless to say, if Israel can’t disarm Hezbollah then how on earth could the most underequipped army in the entire Middle East fare?”
“It’s also important to add that if LAF Commander Rodolphe Haykal were replaced under U.S. pressure, and a showdown were ever attempted, Hezbollah would not shy away from confronting the army,” she added, “and this has been insinuated in previous interviews with Hezbollah officials.”
Newsweek reached out to representatives of Hezbollah and the Lebanese government for comment.
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Hezbollah's War on Two Fronts
Hezbollah continues to command significant support, yet frustration toward the group’s intervention on behalf of foreign allies and the subsequent destruction wrought upon Lebanon have triggered a growing wave of discontent across Lebanese society.
Lebanon was already grappling with an economic crisis that has only spiraled since 2019. While Aoun and Salam’s appointments prevailed over political paralysis, the government continues to struggle to provide basic services, now under further strain due to the wartime displacement of more than one million people. Many of those displaced are within Hezbollah’s support base.
“One of the most serious challenges facing Hezbollah right now concerns the roughly 800,000 displaced Shia from the south and Dahiyeh, who have been treated in ways that are unprecedented and discriminatory,” Saad said. “Many feel the government has largely neglected their situation, failing to provide adequate support or protection at a time of acute vulnerability.”
She pointed to examples of police gathering identity cards of displaced Shiites in predominantly Christian and Sunni areas, new curfews and bans on political activity and even allegations that Beirut Mayor Ibrahim Zeidan recently proposed deporting internal refugees by sea, remarks denied by Zeidan.
“Hostilities from both sides will sharpen the preexisting political divide,” Saad said. “There is clearly a large segment of Lebanese opinion who are not just virulently against Hezbollah, but who are openly supportive of the government’s co-belligerence in this war…. the government has been actively trying to assist Israel in achieving its aims of neutralizing and criminalizing Hezbollah’s resistance and preventing its own army from defending the border villages.
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“Hezbollah’s support base will remain steadfast despite initial discontent with the operation,” she added. “Others, primarily...from the Sunni community, may also be sympathetic given the community’s longstanding hostility toward Israel.”
As Israel and Hezbollah intensify operations, Bitar argued that “the effect on Lebanese public opinion is likely to be complex.”
“On the one hand, most Lebanese blame Hezbollah for exposing the country to devastating retaliation and for making strategic decisions without a national consensus,” Bitar said. “On the other hand, large-scale Israeli military operations that cause extensive civilian destruction historically tend to generate a nationalist reflex, strengthening Hezbollah’s narrative and shifting part of the public debate away from criticism of the group.... the more destructive the Israeli campaign becomes, the more it risks helping Hezbollah regain some legitimacy among segments of Lebanese society.”
This debate also runs through the ranks of the LAF. “The biggest challenge is that Israel is expanding its occupation of south Lebanon, and Hezbollah is the only force pushing back against this expansion while the LAF is withdrawing,” Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy director for research at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, told Newsweek.
“If the LAF is going to be deployed against Hezbollah as it’s fighting an Israeli occupation, this will cause local tensions within the Lebanese Shia community,” Hage Ali said, “because the LAF will be seen as a force assisting Israeli occupation.”
Local conditions also factor in. Hezbollah continues to rely on southern support networks, which Hage Ali pointed out include residents and families with a history of violence related to conflicts with Israel dating back to the first Arab-Israeli War of 1948.
“For many of them, this is basically a repeat. And...they see an existential danger,” Hage Ali said. “So, let’s see how it evolves. So far, I’m seeing them expanding. I think Israel has already taken the first line of towns, and I think they’re moving into the second line, which I think it would be more difficult from there on.”
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Now or Never
From Israel’s point of view, a combination of growing domestic opposition toward Hezbollah and the weakening of both Iran and its regional Axis of Resistance faction constitutes a critical opportunity to uproot a longtime foe. One Israeli military official told Newsweek that while Hezbollah was believed to command hundreds of Radwan Force special units, degraded from the thousands within the group’s ranks when the war first began in October 2023. Between 80 to 90 percent of the group’s stockpile of weapons is also assessed to have been depleted or destroyed, though still in the tens of thousands.
While the Israeli military official said the short-term goal of the IDF operation was to address the front-line national security threat posed by Hezbollah, the overarching objective continued to be total eradication of its armed presence. “Hezbollah is both a terror institution and a political group. We have a problem with the terror institution,” they said. “But our agreement with Lebanon speaks about no Hezbollah as an armed group, and it starts with southern Lebanon, but needs to be all across Lebanon…. But that’s the long-term goal. Right now, we’re focused on...removing this threat from our citizens.”
The Israeli military official said that the Lebanese government should play a direct role in both aims and credited the LAF with having “taken some action,” though “not enough” to alter Israel’s current threat perception. “It’s very clear for the state of Lebanon, the state of Israel. We have no interest to fight against each other,” they said. “The number one problem…between Israel and Lebanon is Hezbollah, and it needs to be removed.
“I think that Lebanon is a sovereign state, and there are different actors globally operating to make Lebanon and the Lebanese Armed Forces a more significant force. There are different actors in the region, specifically IDF, acting to make Hezbollah a less effective, relevant force in the region,” the official continued. “The state of Lebanon, the Lebanese Armed Forces, are not our enemy, but at the same time, we also expect from them to…deal with terror groups operating within them.”
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Yet data shared with Newsweek by the Israel-based Alma Research and Education Center indicated that Hezbollah’s cross-border attacks over recent weeks exceeded the average tempo of strikes launched during the roughly yearlong phase of the initial Israel-Lebanon conflict between October 2023 and November 2024. Sarit Zehavi, founder and president of the Alma Center and a former IDF intelligence officer, called it “a historical mistake to expect the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah.
“It’s not happening, especially not while the commanders of the Lebanese army, some of them are collaborating with Hezbollah. Others are very comfortable with Hezbollah. Others have political reasons,” Zehavi told Newsweek. Rather, she argued, the Lebanese government should focus on cracking down on Hezbollah’s other sectors, including cash flows, political activities and social and health care services. “They are terrified of the fact that a Lebanese will open fire against a Lebanese, terrified of the idea of a civil war, so let’s leave that to Israel,” Zehavi said.
“We are going to defend our people. We will do what it takes in South Lebanon, because we have been waiting for too long, 20 years…. And let’s give the Lebanese government other missions to do to create the overall picture of weakening Hezbollah strategically, and we will deal with the military.”
Zehavi also said she understood those fears expressed by Lebanese officials of a potential outbreak of sectarian conflict, though she argued that, at a time when Hezbollah’s “base is displaced now, and there is a humanitarian crisis now, it will be much more difficult” for such a conflict to erupt. “I do think that we need to put the pressure on the Lebanese government to try and to take this risk,” she added, “because Hezbollah is not going to be weaker than what is happening in the current context.”
Reached for comment, a White House spokesperson referred Newsweek to recent remarks by Trump, who told reporters in mid-March that he supported the Israeli ground offensive in Lebanon. “Look, Hezbollah is a problem. It’s been a problem for a long time, not just now,” Trump said. “Hezbollah is a big problem and they’re rapidly being eliminated.”
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