A “Unilateral Ultimatum”: The Reassignment of Enmity from Israel to Hezbollah

How can we understand the joint statement produced after the fourth trilateral meeting between the U.S., Lebanon and Israel? What do you see as the most concerning terms of the agreement to cease hostilities?

What is most astonishing about the document is its redefinition of the conflict itself.

The ceasefire it announces is made conditional not on Israel ending its aggression, withdrawing from occupied Lebanese territory, releasing prisoners, enabling the return of the displaced, or reconstruction in the South, but on “a complete cessation of Hizbollah fire” and the evacuation of resistance fighters from the South Litani sector.

Israel, by contrast, is assigned no reciprocal obligation whatsoever. There is no timeline for withdrawal, no condition requiring an end to Israeli strikes, and no accountability for the war crimes that preceded these talks. What is presented as a mutual cessation of hostilities is therefore a unilateral ultimatum framed as an agreement, one that grants Israel full freedom of movement to continue its aggression, and reserves its right to resume military operations whenever it determines that its conditions have not been met.

The center of gravity is, instead, Hezbollah, which is cast, not as a Lebanese resistance force confronting occupation, genocide, forced displacement, and aggression, but as Lebanon’s primary enemy. Although the claim that “Hezbollah is an enemy of Lebanon” is attributed to Marco Rubio, the decisive fact is that the Lebanese government signed a document containing those words while simultaneously declaring it has no hostile intent towards Israel.

This is not merely a discursive shift, but a major political turning point, insofar as Israel is relegated from enemy state to putative partner helping Lebanon rid itself of the “enemy within”: Hezbollah, and by extension, the people of the South, the Bekaa, and Dahieh.

This is not merely a discursive shift, but a major political turning point, insofar as Israel is relegated from enemy state to putative partner helping Lebanon rid itself of the “enemy within”: Hezbollah, and by extension, the people of the South, the Bekaa, and Dahieh.

By making Hezbollah the enemy, its entire constituency — the Shia community as a whole, around 93 percent of whom support the resistance — is also de-nationalized.

So the talks can not actually be called “negotiations” because Lebanon is not negotiating anything. They are a U.S.-Israeli-managed compliance process, with Hezbollah being the problem to be solved, while Israel is treated, not as a party to the conflict, but as the party entitled to decide whether or not Lebanon has complied, and to keep aggressing whenever it claims it has not.

The proposed “pilot zones” must, therefore, be viewed in this context. They are not mechanisms for restoring sovereignty, but a phased internal pacification program managed through the U.S.-Israeli framework, in which the Lebanese Armed Forces are positioned less as Lebanon’s sovereign military force than as an Israeli enforcement instrument — or in other words, occupation transferred into a Lebanese-administered security regime pre-set by Israel and the U.S.

Equally damning is Lebanon’s decision to join the condemnation of Iran and delinking itself from it, at the very moment when Tehran had made Lebanon a central condition of its own negotiations with Washington. Iran was not treating Lebanon as a peripheral file, but as a regional red line — suspending talks with the U.S. in response to Israel’s continued operations in Lebanon and Gaza, threatening the full closure of the Strait of Hormuz unless those attacks ceased, and warning that any Israeli strike on Beirut would trigger direct retaliation against Israel and risk reopening the war against Iran itself.

By signing onto the U.S.-Israeli framing of Iran as the destabilizing actor, the Lebanese government effectively stripped itself of the only counter-leverage available to it, endorsing the very framework designed to isolate that leverage, criminalize the resistance, and leave Lebanon negotiating alone under Israeli fire.

The government is committing not just to disarm Hezbollah, but to ensure that no resistance ever emerges again; in other words, to extinguish the resistance identity. This is similar to the first point in the Gaza plan which calls for “deradicalization” of Gaza.

The document also says “this includes the disarmament of non-state armed groups, and the prevention of their re-emergence.” This is a commitment by the government not merely to disarm Hezbollah, but to ensure that no resistance ever emerges again; in other words, to extinguish the resistance identity. This is similar to the first point in the Gaza plan which calls for “deradicalization” of Gaza. Here, too, the government is pledging to disinherit the entire legacy of resistance.

In short, what the government is doing, as Kassem Ghorayeb has astutely observed, is worse than surrender. Surrender would mean that the Lebanese authority acknowledges defeat, submits to the existing balance of power, and relinquishes its rights accordingly, without necessarily adopting the Israeli narrative that Lebanon is the aggressor and Israel the party aggressed against. But what the Lebanese authority is doing today goes far beyond surrender.

How does this moment compare to the period preceding the May 17 Agreement of 1983? And how does that agreement compare to the June 3 statement?

Obviously, there are similarities, but as egregious as the May 17 Agreement was, the documents we have seen emerge from these talks, including and especially, this last statement of intentions, are arguably far worse for Lebanon.

The May 17 Agreement was signed under conditions that could at least explain its existence on the most surface reading, even if this was not why the Gemayel government agreed to it. Israel had just invaded Lebanon, Beirut was under occupation, and the Lebanese state was negotiating with a gun to its head and an army inside its capital. The asymmetry in power and the agreement’s illegitimacy were so apparent that it collapsed within a year.

The current government enjoys none of these even apparent mitigating circumstances, and yet has gone further in every measurable respect. There is no Israeli army in Beirut and the Lebanese state is far from being militarily defeated. Hezbollah’s military capacity is not only reconstituting, but adapting, with its expanding use of FPVs and other drone and missile tactics already producing major tactical gains against Israeli ground forces, while Iran is negotiating with Washington from a position of regional strength and has made a Lebanese ceasefire a priority within those talks. In other words, Lebanon today possesses diplomatic leverage it has simply chosen not to use. This government therefore cannot claim the alibi of 1983 — that is the alibi of a state negotiating under direct occupation, with no political space, no strategic depth, and no available alternatives.

The May 17 Agreement itself, while shameful and a surrender document, was less catastrophic than this latest document, whereby Lebanon openly endorses the Israeli narrative, and aligns itself strategically with the U.S. and Israel.

But beyond the context, the May 17 Agreement itself, while shameful and a surrender document, was less catastrophic than this latest document, whereby Lebanon openly endorses the Israeli narrative, and aligns itself strategically with the U.S. and Israel.

Article 1, paragraph 3 and the Annex of the May 17 Agreement stated that “Israel undertakes to withdraw all its armed forces from Lebanon,” with the Annex specifying that “within 8 to 12 weeks of the entry into force of the present Agreement, all Israeli forces have been withdrawn from Lebanon.” This obligation — however bad-faith in intent, however conditional in practice — was written into the text as a named Israeli commitment. The June 3 statement contains not a single clause, phrase, or word concerning Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory. Israel does not undertake, commit, or even acknowledge any withdrawal obligation.

The May 17 Agreement was formally bilateral throughout: both parties undertook obligations, both parties were named as responsible for implementation. The June 3 ceasefire is explicitly asymmetrical from its opening operative sentence — “the ceasefire is contingent on a complete cessation of Hizbollah fire and the evacuation of all Hizbollah operatives from the South Litani Sector” — with no reciprocal condition whatsoever imposed on Israel. The ceasefire is not a mutual suspension of hostilities, but is an ultimatum addressed exclusively to one side.

The May 17 Agreement Annex also says this: “Three months after completion of the withdrawal of all Israeli forces from Lebanon, the Security Arrangements Committee will conduct a full-scale review of the adequacy of the security arrangements delineated in this Annex in order to improve them,” whereas the April and June documents make even a ceasefire contingent on a Hezbollah withdrawal/disarmament, let alone withdrawal, which isn’t mentioned.

You have previously warned that Lebanon could slide into civil strife. What is your assessment today?

I see the prospect of civil strife as present as ever, especially if they try to remove [Commander of the Lebanese army] Rodolphe Haykal, or if he resigns. If that should happen, then the Israeli aggression will be only one level of warfare that will engulf Lebanon, and Hezbollah will also have to fight a “counterinsurgency” launched by the state, which will be fighting alongside Israel.

The other scenario is mass public pressure and protests and civil disobedience that will be overwhelmingly Shia, but will also include other sects to a lesser extent. This movement will seek to topple the government, either preceding or alongside the government’s counter-resistance campaign.

What do you believe is behind Hezbollah’s seeming reluctance to confront the government?

Hezbollah is very constrained by the need for stability, the main reason being the over 1.2 million displaced people, who are majority Shia. They’re Hezbollah’s Achilles heel. If there is going to be a popular protest, the party has left it as a last resort, given the ever-present dangers of sectarian strife — especially between the displaced and host communities, particularly aligned with right-wing groups who have been less welcoming of their presence.

I don’t know if you recall, but in his last speech, Sheikh Naim Qassem did threaten public grassroots mobilizations to topple the government. But that was regarding al-Qard al-Hassan.

So that kind of weapon is an option, but they’re leaving it as a last resort. They’re still sort of using Berri now as a bridge and are trying to solve it that way. That’s also why they haven’t left the government, which would be easier, if you think about it; it would be less messy than public protests. The Shia ministers have still not quit the cabinet, and that’s because of the chaos that they fear would come with that — because it would be chaos in the midst of Israeli aggression, which is the most explosive type of scenario that could happen. Otherwise, they know this government is shameless enough to replace any resigned Shia ministers with token ministers who will be aligned with the U.S. and Israel, and will not reflect the community’s political identity. But I would not rule out popular protests in the coming weeks, especially if the government is suicidal enough to try and enforce anything that’s on this agreement.

That also presupposes that there is no agreement between Iran and the U.S., which could still short-circuit everything else. But if that doesn’t happen, and if it drags on much longer, and if the government is emboldened by the very slow pace of the Iran-U.S. talks or the deadlock and actually tries to enact any of the items on the document we saw yesterday, then Hezbollah could potentially use that.

What I am more certain about is the popular aspect — that there very well would be popular protests to bring down the government. I think that could happen, but that would really be a last resort.

How do you imagine the negotiations would have unfolded had they been tied to the U.S.-Iran talks?

This is a good question. If the talks were indirect and under the aegis of the Iran talks, had the Lebanese government done this, the outcome could have been far less asymmetrical, and Lebanon would have been equipped with real leverage. Lebanon would not have entered the talks as an isolated, weak state negotiating under Israeli fire, but as one front within a wider regional equation in which Iran was already treating a Lebanese ceasefire as a condition of any broader settlement.

The U.S. would no longer have been free to dictate terms to a Lebanese government eager to comply; it would have needed to deliver those terms to Lebanon as part of what it owed Iran for cooperation on the nuclear file.

Israel, which could not block a deal embedded in a larger framework that Washington actively needs, would have faced a qualitatively different pressure than it faces when it is simply co-authoring the terms of a Lebanese submission. The question would have ceased to be what Lebanon could be persuaded to accept and instead would have been what Israel is forced to concede; so instead of accepting a ceasefire conditional on Hezbollah’s withdrawal while leaving Israeli occupation and giving Israel freedom of movement, Lebanon could have insisted on a comprehensive cessation of hostilities, and guarantees against renewed strikes as part of the regional bargain.

Given Hezbollah’s ability to inflict heavy losses on Israeli ground troops and forces across the border, particularly through its expanding use of FPV drones and other tactics, Israel would have been forced to withdraw as a precondition for an end to Hezbollah fire and the restoration of security in the north [had the Lebanon talks been tied to the U.S.-Iran negotiations].

This would also have made Israeli withdrawal the central focus of the agreement. Given Hezbollah’s ability to inflict heavy losses on Israeli ground troops and forces across the border, particularly through its expanding use of FPV drones and other tactics, Israel would have been forced to withdraw as a precondition for an end to Hezbollah fire and the restoration of security in the north. Under the current talks, by contrast, the government rewards Israel with an illusory promise to prevent the resistance from repelling the occupation, which in practice means bogging Hezbollah down in a civil war, while leaving Israel free to consolidate its annexation of South Lebanon.

None of this is to say that Israel would have easily withdrawn or that the war would have quickly ended, but it certainly wouldn’t have prevented the possibility of either aim being achieved as the current talks are doing now.