Beirut, Lebanon - The guns have largely fallen silent across southern Lebanon. But the fragile truce that halted the latest round of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has done little to resolve the deeper questions that made the conflict possible in the first place, and Lebanon's government is discovering that peace may demand more than war ever did.
The ceasefire, brokered with heavy American and Saudi involvement, was greeted with markedly different interpretations. President Joseph Aoun delivered an address declaring that “Lebanon has reclaimed its decision,” framing the deal as a restoration of sovereignty long deferred.
Hezbollah's Secretary-General Naim Qassem called the American statement accompanying the truce “an insult to Lebanon”, objecting not only to its content but to the fact that it was issued without cabinet approval.
For a country accustomed to its crises being narrated in competing registers, this was familiar ground. What is less familiar is the terrain that lies ahead . What Israel was building before the guns stopped To understand what the ceasefire could mean, it helps to understand what it interrupted.
According to retired Brigadier General Yarab Sakhr, the military picture on the eve of the truce showed Israel close to consolidating a horizontal buffer line stretching from Naqoura town to Kfarshuba village, approximately 100 kilometres wide and between seven and ten kilometres deep.
That would amount to roughly 452 square kilometres of Lebanese territory under effective Israeli control, justified publicly as securing northern Israel and preventing weapons from reaching the border.
Beyond that first line, Sakhr says Israel was developing a second defensive perimeter between the Litani and Awali rivers, which Israeli military planners were calling a "hunting and pursuit zone".
Key towns in the east, centre, and west of the south, including Bint Jbeil , Khiam, and Naqoura, were assessed by Israel as having effectively fallen .
The plan, as Sakhr reads it, was to impose a new security reality north of the Litani, then leave the task of disarming Hezbollah to the Lebanese state.
The ceasefire, in Sakhr’s reading, was not a military reversal for Israel but a political calculation.
“This truce aims to give the Lebanese authority an opportunity to translate its political decisions into a field reality that extends full sovereignty,” Sakhr said, adding that it was also intended to pave the way for “high-level political negotiations that go beyond the ambassador level, to ensure long-term stability on both sides of the border”. The government's bind The Lebanese state finds itself caught between pressures it cannot fully satisfy in any direction.
On one side, the United States and Israel are demanding demonstrable action, specifically, that the army extend its presence south of the Litani and that Hezbollah's weapons be visibly curtailed. On the other, the government cannot simply confront Hezbollah militarily ; the political cost would be existential, and the practical capacity does not exist.
Political analyst Qassem Qassir puts it plainly: the government is not in a position to pursue forced disarmament.
“The Lebanese government is unable to move toward disarmament by force,” he said, arguing that Hezbollah's weapons “still have justifications for their existence given the continuing threats”. The sequence matters enormously, disarmament cannot precede Israeli withdrawal without being seen as capitulation.
The government's room for manoeuvre is further narrowed by Aoun's own conduct. Qassir has noted a pattern of presidential decisions taken without cabinet consultation, the expulsion of the Iranian ambassador, and the opening of direct negotiation channels with Israel, which have unsettled allies and drawn accusations of bypassing the constitutional process.
In his assessment, Aoun's performance “suggests a tendency to restore the pre-Taif order by strengthening the presidential role and making fundamental decisions without discussion in the cabinet or parliament”.
Writer and analyst George Aakouri frames the stakes more bluntly.
“The adventures undertaken by forces outside legitimacy since 8 October have brought the country nothing but total destruction, economic collapse, and loss of life, in service of foreign agendas that have nothing to do with the national interest,” he said.
Continuing on the same path, he argued, “will lead Lebanon into further quagmires, while commitment to the constitution and restricting weapons to legitimate forces is the only safe road to stopping the bleeding”. Hezbollah's calculus Hezbollah's position is more constrained than its public posture suggests, but its constraints are not Lebanese ones. Aakouri makes a point that cuts to the heart of the disarmament question: the decision to surrender weapons does not rest with the party itself.
“The actual decision to hand over weapons is not in the party's hands, it is an Iranian decision par excellence,” he said, “because the party represents an organic part of the Islamic Revolution project and Tehran's ambitions in the region”.
This explains what Aakouri describes as the party's consistent pattern: invoking “strategic patience” and positioning itself behind the Lebanese state rhetorically, while in practice moving only when Iranian interests are directly at stake.
He pointed to the party's response to the killing of figures close to Khamenei as an example, action taken, in his words, “in fulfilment of Iranian blood and not in response to Lebanese national interest”.
Iran, Aakouri argued, “will not relinquish this card except if it senses a real danger threatening the existence of the regime itself,” adding that all of Tehran's regional proxies, Hezbollah included, “aim primarily at improving Iran's negotiating hand and functioning as forward lines of defence for its system”.
For now, Hezbollah is maintaining quiet in response to Israeli ceasefire violations, house demolitions, repositioning of forces, and artillery fire, while reserving the right to respond. That restraint reflects calculation, not conversion.
The party understands that the international environment is hostile, that its Iranian patron is under unprecedented pressure, and that any resumption of full hostilities would occur under far worse conditions than before. What a final settlement could actually look like The honest answer is that nobody knows, and the gap between the parties' opening positions is vast.
Israel wants a security reality that prevents any Hezbollah military presence south of the Litani, robust monitoring mechanisms, and what amounts to a permanent buffer zone enforced either by the Lebanese army or international forces, according to the analysts.
Hezbollah and its allies reject any arrangement that formalises Israeli influence over Lebanese territory, and the Lebanese government cannot be seen to endorse one.
Qassir is direct on this point. “Israeli and American proposals around establishing a buffer zone in southern Lebanon are demands that cannot be achieved on the ground,” he said, stressing that the official Lebanese position, and the popular one, “starts from the right of residents to return to their border villages,” which represents “a fundamental condition for any future understandings”.
He also pushed back on Israeli claims of military dominance. Israel, he argued, "was not able to penetrate deeply, seven to eight kilometres, as promoted, with actual control “not exceeding a few kilometres at some border points”.
That gap between claim and reality, in his reading, means the buffer zone remains “a political demand lacking a field foundation” that ground realities will ultimately frustrate.
Sakhr takes a harder view of what Israel will seek to lock in. He warned that the ceasefire text, like the 27 November 2024 agreement before it, contains provisions granting Israel the right to act if it perceives security threats, “which led to the killing of 500 Hezbollah members and commanders during the previous truce period”. The ambiguity is not accidental.
What it becomes depends on whether Lebanon's institutions can demonstrate that the state is serious about sovereignty in practice, not just in presidential addresses.
Aakouri put the challenge in terms that cut through the diplomatic language. “The security guarantees in Lebanon remain relative. The military institution is the greatest and only guarantee, given the popular cohesion and broad international support it enjoys”.
The alternative, another round of outsourced war, has already shown what it costs.
“The current opportunity,” Sakhr said, “may be the last chance to save Lebanon from recurring conflicts”.
Lebanon has heard that before. The difference, this time, is that fewer people are willing to dismiss it. Ali Awadah is a Lebanese journalist with bylines in several local outlets, focusing on human rights This article is published in collaboration with Egab Edited by Charlie Hoyle