Lebanon — Hezbollah

Summary

On 5 August 2025 the cabinet tasked the army with a plan to confine arms, before the end of the year, solely to the forces listed in the 2024 cessation of hostilities. On 7 August it approved the objectives of a US paper, among them the gradual ending of the armed presence of all non-state actors, "including Hezbollah", across Lebanese territory south and north of the Litani; it approved the objectives only, not timelines. On 5 September it welcomed and took note of the army's phased plan and kept its content secret. The army reported its first phase, south of the Litani, complete in January 2026, except in areas Israel held; on 16 February the cabinet took note of a second phase, which the information minister described as four months, extendable. On 2 March 2026, as Hezbollah entered the war, the cabinet decided an immediate ban on all its security and military activities as unlawful, obliged it to hand its weapons to the state and confine itself to politics, and instructed the army to implement the plan north of the Litani. Hezbollah rejected the decision, according to the UN, and its ministers stayed in the government. In the June 2026 Framework the state undertook to achieve the verified disarmament of all non-state armed groups anywhere in Lebanon.

Why it matters

The whole Israel–Lebanon sequence — Israeli withdrawal against verified disarmament — runs through this relationship, and it is the one the Lebanese state cannot settle by signature. A state that has outlawed a party's arms and governs with it is the condition every external actor is reading.

What is disputed

What the relationship is. The Lebanese government's position, in its own decisions of 5 and 7 August 2025 and 2 March 2026, is that Hezbollah's security and military activities are unlawful and that arms belong to the state alone throughout Lebanon. Hezbollah's position is that it rejects those decisions — it called the August decision a "grave sin" and rejected the March ban — and that the 2024 cessation's disarmament terms apply only south of the Litani; Israel holds that they apply to all of Lebanon. The army reports progress south of the Litani; Israel disputes that Hezbollah was disarmed there. No source read establishes the state's enforcement.

Credible sources actively disagree about this relationship. That is a stronger statement than weak evidence, and it is not softened here.

Related events

• The Israel–Lebanon cessation of hostilities and its Mechanism 26 – 27 Nov 2024

  Diplomatic · Military

• Lebanon's cabinet tasks the army with confining arms to the state 5 Aug – 5 Sep 2025

  Political · Military

• Lebanon's government bans Hezbollah's military activity 2 Mar 2026

  Political

• The US–Israel–Lebanon Trilateral Framework is signed in Washington 26 Jun 2026

  Diplomatic · Military

What remains unknown

• The army's plan is secret by cabinet decision; its phases, geography and progress are known only from the army's and ministers' statements.
• No source read establishes whether the 2 March 2026 ban has been enforced against any Hezbollah weapons or personnel.
• The published Arabic text of the 7 August 2025 objectives omits items 8 and 9; why is not stated.

Readings the evidence also supports

• The decisions can be read as a state reclaiming its monopoly of force step by step, or as commitments made to outside actors that the state lacks the means or the consensus to carry out. The information minister's statement that the army will execute the plan "according to available capabilities" is consistent with both.

Listed because the record's own assessment is not the only one its sources permit — not as a hedge on the assessment above.