Between Israel and Hezbollah, Lebanon Is on the Brink of Civil War

The Lebanese government struggles to provide even the most basic requirements of state sovereignty. It can supply electricity only for a few hours a day, and many of its residents prefer to use dollars rather than the local currency, which has lost much of its value. Its army is not the country’s strongest military force, but the second strongest after Hezbollah, or even the third if Israel is taken into account, after expanding its presence in Lebanese territory in recent months.

But now Lebanon is under pressure from the United States, Israel and large parts of the Lebanese public to confront Hezbollah, a step that could push the country toward a new civil war. The mounting pressure stems from a new cease-fire agreement, which is already causing tensions and is intended to end the war with Israel. The war has shaken Lebanon since early March, when Hezbollah joined Iran’s side and began launching rockets across the border. The agreement requires the Lebanese government to gradually restore its control over its territory, while disarming Hezbollah and dismantling the organization’s infrastructure. This is a plan that was already tried after the last war between Israel and Hezbollah in late 2024. Some progress was recorded at first, but it later stalled when Hezbollah refused to disarm and dug in.

The organization, which represents many of Lebanon’s Shiite Muslims, is considered one of the world’s strongest armed nonstate groups. Tensions in Lebanon are only increasing as the country becomes a more central arena in the broader regional conflict. Iran wants Lebanon included as well in the cease-fire agreement in its war with Israel and the United States. Israel and Iran exchanged barrages of fire after Israel attacked Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sunday. The renewed escalation is testing the resilience of the fragile cease-fire in the Middle East that President Trump promoted.

Memories of the dark days of the previous civil war

Israel’s recent ground invasion and airstrikes have created more than one million displaced people inside Lebanon, many of whom now live in tents on the streets of Beirut. Shiite Muslims who were displaced from their homes are encountering hostility, because of fears that their presence will lead to Israeli attacks in Christian, Druze and Sunni neighborhoods and towns, which have so far enjoyed relative security. Anger at Hezbollah for dragging the country into another war has intensified, but the organization, weakened by Israeli strikes in 2024, has become bolder and is now openly calling on Lebanese to take to the streets and resist their government.

“We know how an attempt to disarm Hezbollah by military force will begin, but not how it will end,” said Khalil Hilo, a former Lebanese army general who opposes the group.

Lebanon has for years stood on the brink of becoming a failed state. Throughout its history it has been caught between Syria, Israel and powerful sectarian militias, and it has never managed to achieve full sovereignty. These tensions erupted in full force during the civil war that raged in Lebanon between 1975 and 1990. Rival militias of Shiites, Sunnis, Maronite Christians, Palestinians and Druze, led by local warlords, split the country into enclaves controlled by checkpoints and extrajudicial executions. The fighting devastated Beirut. The city was divided by the “Green Line,” which separated the areas controlled by the rival factions and which none of them dared cross.

In that chaos, Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 in order to attack the PLO, which recruited its fighters from among Palestinian refugees and their descendants, displaced during the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Israeli forces reached Beirut, and with the help of several Christian-led militias controlled large parts of southern Lebanon until 2000.

For many Lebanese, the latest Israeli invasion, Hezbollah’s military activity and the worsening sectarian tensions evoke memories of those dark days. A prolonged stay in Lebanon showed that the country’s divisive forces are once again gaining strength, placing Lebanese society under the heaviest pressure it has faced in years.

“Where is the state? Where is the state?” asked Ali al-Dayeh, 33, who recently got married and lives with his wife in a tent on the street after his home and the bakery where he worked in Beirut’s southern suburbs were destroyed during this year’s war. “We are alone.”

Loss of faith in the government and taking the law into their own hands

In the upscale waterfront district of Zaitunay Bay in Beirut, wealthy residents dine in luxury restaurants near the Four Seasons hotel and host parties on yachts. On the same street, hundreds of people live in tent camps, most of them Shiites, but also Palestinians and Syrian refugees. Some said they arrived there after landlords from other groups refused to rent them apartments.

The nearby Sunni Al-Qantari Mosque chose a different path. It opened its gates and provided supplies and aid to Shiites who had sought refuge in a nearby Sunni school. Imad Subh, the mosque’s religious leader, said some worshippers objected to his decision to accept members of the community associated with the group that dragged Lebanon into war. They also feared becoming a target if one of Hezbollah’s men were found among them.

Local community leaders say the government’s inability to rein in Hezbollah is leading to a loss of trust and to people taking the law into their own hands. In an area of eastern Beirut populated mainly by Christians and known for the presence of right-wing gangs, groups of men dressed in black were seen near a building bearing a four-story portrait of Bashir Gemayel, the Maronite political and militia leader who was killed in 1982.

“This war is very different from the war in 2024. Today there is resentment, division and sectarian discrimination. I have even heard Sunnis say that they support Israel’s war against Hezbollah, its supporters and Shiites in general,” Subh said. “I have never heard things like that from Sunnis before. I am trying to calm these feelings and bring people closer together.”

The IDF said it would act against Hezbollah operatives wherever they are found, even outside the organization’s traditional strongholds, which include large areas in southern Lebanon, Beirut’s southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley in the east of the country.

An Israeli strike in Ain Saadeh, a Christian town in the mountains outside Beirut, killed Pierre Mouawad, his wife and one of their neighbors. Mouawad was not a Hezbollah member, but an activist with the Lebanese Forces, a Christian party that strongly opposes the organization. The IDF said the strike targeted a Hezbollah military command center and added that it regretted the harm to civilians. According to local sources, after the incident landlords evicted several Shiite families from their apartments in the area.

At Mouawad’s funeral, armed men drew pistols and rifles and fired into the air in a show of force. “We are trying to calm the street to make sure the situation does not escalate further,” said Razi al-Hajj, the Lebanese Forces lawmaker representing the area.

A few days later, on April 8, in the afternoon, Israel struck 100 targets within 90 seconds across Lebanon, in one of the deadliest bombing waves the country has seen in recent years. The strike hit several upscale neighborhoods and major tourist areas in Beirut, shocked the Lebanese public and led some politicians to call on their supporters to prevent unfamiliar displaced people from renting apartments.

About five years ago, Lebanon came close to anarchy because of a severe banking crisis, the Beirut port explosion that devastated nearby neighborhoods and eroded public trust in the government, and a prolonged political struggle over Hezbollah that prevented the country from electing a president for two years.

A cash-strapped and militarily inferior government

The blow Israel dealt Hezbollah in 2024 opened the door to a change in direction. Parliament elected Joseph Aoun as president, and the United States welcomed the opportunity for the government to assert its sovereignty and disarm Hezbollah. The Lebanese army began operating in the south of the country to dismantle Hezbollah positions and weapons depots. The United States and even Israel acknowledged that this effort was bearing fruit. At times the army also relied on Israeli intelligence.

But in the fall, progress stalled. Hezbollah began rearming, and Israel warned it would attack again with force. “Israel’s goal was to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its capabilities, while we, by contrast, worked to restore them and were prepared to pay the price involved,” said Youssef al-Zein, Hezbollah’s media relations director, to a small group of journalists during a recent breakfast in Beirut.

The Lebanese government failed to stop Hezbollah from joining the war on Iran’s side. On March 2, the Lebanese prime minister announced a ban on the organization’s military activity, but Hezbollah simply ignored it. Later that month, the Lebanese foreign ministry ordered Iran’s ambassador to leave the country, but he refused.

“Understand well, disarmament means destruction, and we will never agree to that,” Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem said in a speech in May, in which he also called on Lebanese to stand up against their government.

The Lebanese government is not only cash-strapped and militarily weaker than Hezbollah, it is also fractured along the same sectarian fault lines that characterize Lebanese society as a whole. The U.S. Treasury Department said in May that Hezbollah receives intelligence from sources inside the state security apparatus, including the Lebanese army.

The United States is the main supporter of the Lebanese army. Since 2006 it has transferred more than $3 billion and provided training for its soldiers. The chronically weak army does not have advanced air defense systems or significant missile capabilities, and it has only a small number of attack aircraft. Soldiers are paid so little that many are forced to take second jobs.

Current and former Lebanese army officials acknowledge that the army functions primarily as a unifying institution, not as a force with significant combat power. Its tens of thousands of soldiers come from all of Lebanon’s sects, and it is considered one of the few institutions in the country that reflects its sectarian mosaic. Since the end of the civil war in 1990, the army has worked to disarm nonstate armed groups, mediate between rival political factions and fight drug smuggling and Islamist organizations.

This time, however, the task is more delicate. U.S. and Lebanese officials say Lebanese soldiers do not want to be seen as doing Israel’s work, and many of them are unwilling to confront their fellow countrymen, even if they are Hezbollah members.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States is working to establish a mechanism under which approved Lebanese army units would receive the training and equipment needed to act against Hezbollah, so that Israel would not need to do so.

Since the November 2024 cease-fire, Israel has struck Hezbollah thousands of times and increased the pace of attacks in the spring. But despite the blows it has suffered, the organization has recovered. According to a Wall Street Journal report from late last year, Hezbollah replenished its stock of rockets, anti-tank missiles and artillery through seaports and smuggling routes through Syria that remain active. The organization also regained control of old weapons caches and, in some cases, even produced new weapons itself.

Hezbollah operatives are now using new tactics, including explosive drones guided by fiber optics, which Israel has difficulty countering, according to analysts. They say that if Israel tries to disarm Hezbollah on its own, it could find itself dragged into another prolonged war and a complicated, lasting occupation.

Attempts to reach a political arrangement

The alternative is a U.S.-led political process between Israel and the Lebanese government that does not directly include Hezbollah. Senior Lebanese officials said even the Lebanese president uses a mediator to pass messages to Hezbollah rather than maintaining direct contact with the organization.

Washington recently hosted rare direct talks at ambassador level between Israel and Lebanon. At the same time, it is bringing together IDF and Lebanese army officials to improve security coordination between them against Hezbollah.

According to senior Lebanese officials, President Trump asked to arrange a meeting between Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Aoun opposed the move, because he sees it as too great a political risk.

However, those officials said Aoun understands that Israel wants to ensure the security of its northern communities and make sure the Lebanese army is the only force operating on the Lebanese side of the border. They said Aoun supports a process under which Israel would gradually withdraw from areas it controls, and the Lebanese army would enter in its place and establish control there. That is effectively the arrangement Israel and Lebanon agreed to last week.

On Thursday, Israeli forces withdrew from the village of Dibil in southern Lebanon, and Lebanese army forces moved in.

Senior Lebanese officials believe the war has created another opportunity for the government. While Hezbollah points to the presence of Israeli soldiers on Lebanese soil as proof that its weapons are needed to defend the country, the destruction left by the war and the embarrassing infiltration of Israeli intelligence into the organization’s ranks have damaged its standing, even among Shiites.

The United States has pledged to help strengthen the Lebanese army, but for now the army is still not the strongest force on the ground. Above Beirut, the constant buzz of Israeli drones can be heard, along with the steady noise of diesel generators operating under loose oversight. For many in Lebanon, these are daily reminders of the government’s weakness.

Routine law enforcement has also become a challenge. In April, security forces entered a Sunni neighborhood in Beirut to arrest a generator operator suspected of violating regulations. The forces fired into the air as they entered, and clashes broke out after local residents blocked the streets. According to residents, if the government does not enforce the law on Hezbollah, there is no reason for Sunnis to obey it.

“The public is fed up with selective and inconsistent law enforcement,” said Waddah Sadek, the lawmaker representing the neighborhood where the clashes took place. “The Sunnis in Beirut are sending a message: ‘Look, we can block roads too.’”

These tensions continue to trouble many Lebanese who lived through the country’s previous chaotic civil war.

“The ingredients for an outbreak of civil unrest are already there,” said Hilo, the former Lebanese general. “The emotional tensions are increasing.”