Lebanon’s Army Claims Arms Monopoly in the South, Testing Hezbollah and Israel

A new reality on the border

On a low ridge above the Lebanese border village of Kfar Kila, a Lebanese soldier stands in a sandbagged position, his rifle slung over his shoulder as a United Nations patrol rumbles past. For years, such hills were dotted with bunkers and observation posts belonging to Hezbollah. Today, those positions are manned by the Lebanese Armed Forces.

On Jan. 8, the army said that change was not just cosmetic. In a formal statement, the military declared it had “achieved the goal of a state monopoly on arms in the country’s south in an effective and tangible way,” asserting that between the Litani River and the Israeli border, only state security forces and U.N. peacekeepers now openly bear weapons.

The announcement marked the first time since Lebanon’s civil war that any government has claimed exclusive control over arms in the country’s most volatile border strip. It also set up a test of whether that claim can withstand scrutiny from Israel, Hezbollah and the international powers that have pushed for this outcome for nearly two decades.

Ceasefire enforcement and Resolution 1701

The army’s statement caps a year of accelerated deployments and dismantling of non-state military sites in the border zone, carried out under a U.S.-brokered ceasefire that halted more than 13 months of cross-border fire between Hezbollah and Israel in late 2024.

Lebanese officials present the campaign as long-delayed implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah war and called for the area between the Blue Line and the Litani to be free of any arms other than those of the Lebanese state and the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

“South of the Litani River, weapons are now under the control of the Lebanese state,” President Joseph Aoun said in a speech days after the army’s announcement. He added that the government’s objective remained “placing all weapons under state authority,” a reference to longstanding commitments in Resolution 1701 and earlier U.N. decisions.

Hezbollah, which built up a vast arsenal and entrenched itself along the frontier despite those resolutions, has not publicly commented in detail on the Jan. 8 declaration. The group has long argued its weapons are necessary to resist Israel and has opposed broad disarmament. Lebanese security officials say that while Hezbollah rejected disarmament north of the Litani, it did not physically obstruct the army’s moves in the southern strip over the past year.

The mechanics of the post-2024 truce

The current push began after a cessation of hostilities took effect on Nov. 27, 2024, following a period in which Hezbollah and allied factions fired thousands of rockets into northern Israel and Israeli forces launched extensive airstrikes and artillery barrages across southern Lebanon. The truce arrangement, mediated by the United States and endorsed by key Security Council members, tied a phased Israeli pullback to expanded deployment of the Lebanese army and UNIFIL.

Under that deal, the Israel Defense Forces agreed to withdraw from positions in southern Lebanon within roughly two months—later extended into February 2025—while the Lebanese army committed to move into vacated areas and enforce a ban on non-state weapons south of the Litani.

A multilateral monitoring committee bringing together Lebanon, Israel, the United States, France and the United Nations was created to track compliance and coordinate security incidents.

By mid-January 2025, U.N. peacekeeping officials told the Security Council that the Lebanese army had expanded from about a dozen positions in the south to 93 locations, with a plan to deploy thousands more troops. Over the following months, the army—often working alongside UNIFIL units—uncovered and dismantled what officials described as an extensive network of tunnels, bunkers and arms depots.

A Lebanese security official said in May that “over 90%” of Hezbollah’s military infrastructure south of the Litani had been removed and that the group had “essentially withdrawn its military presence from that zone.” In private briefings, Western and Lebanese officials said forces had cleared hundreds of suspected weapons sites, including launch pads and storage areas hidden in orchards and abandoned houses.

Foreign military assessments cited by diplomats in Beirut estimate that nearly 10,000 rockets, about 400 larger missiles, and more than 200,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance and munitions have been removed or destroyed in southern Lebanon since the ceasefire took hold. The figures could not be independently verified, but U.N. reports confirm that peacekeepers have discovered more than a hundred weapons caches and described the pace of clearance operations as unprecedented.

Beirut’s broader ambition—and Israel’s doubts

Lebanese political leaders began signaling where this was heading well before the Jan. 8 statement. In February 2025, Information Minister Paul Morcos read out a government policy program that pledged “the state’s duty to monopolize bearing arms and enforcing state sovereignty over all its territory solely through its own forces.” In May, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, a former judge on the International Court of Justice, told reporters that the government had brought “80% of weapons in southern Lebanon under its control,” adding: “All over the Lebanese territory, the state should have a monopoly on arms.”

By late December, as a self-imposed deadline for clearing non-state arms south of the Litani approached, senior officials said disarmament in the zone was “nearly done.” Lebanese authorities said the army’s declaration in January marked completion of the first phase of a broader security plan often referred to informally as “Shield of the Homeland,” which envisions gradually extending firm state control northward.

That framing has not reassured Israel, which continues to view Hezbollah as its most serious immediate military threat despite the movement’s battlefield losses and damaged infrastructure from the 2024 war. A day after the Lebanese army’s announcement, the Israeli military said its forces were striking Hezbollah targets in “several areas of Lebanon,” and senior officials questioned whether the group’s rocket-fire capabilities had truly been neutralized in the border region.

Israeli leaders have repeatedly indicated that they will continue airstrikes and special operations in Lebanon as long as they consider Hezbollah to pose a danger. In remarks to parliament in late 2025, Defense Minister Israel Katz said: “There will be no calm in Beirut, nor order and stability in Lebanon, until the security of the state of Israel is guaranteed … Hezbollah: we will disarm them.”

U.N. officials have warned that such operations risk undermining the very disarmament efforts Israel and its allies have sought. In a statement after a series of airstrikes on Nov. 6, 2025, UNIFIL said the attacks in its area of operations “constitute clear violations of Security Council resolution 1701” and had occurred just as the Lebanese army was “undertaking operations to control unauthorized weapons and infrastructure in the south Litani area.”

Lebanese officials make a similar argument, saying persistent Israeli overflights and occasional ground incursions—documented by UNIFIL in the thousands since the ceasefire—strengthen Hezbollah’s narrative that disarmament would leave Lebanon exposed.

Beirut also continues to contest Israel’s presence in several border sectors, including parts of the divided village of Ghajar and the Kfar Shuba hills, which the army explicitly excluded from its claim of a “monopoly on arms” because Israeli troops remain there.

Progress, limits, and the risks ahead

Western and regional diplomats say the progress in the south is nonetheless significant. For the first time since the 1970s, they note, no non-state group is openly deployed with weapons along most of Lebanon’s border with Israel. That was not true even after the Taif Accord ended Lebanon’s civil war or after Resolution 1701 was adopted in 2006.

At the same time, diplomats and independent analysts caution against reading the Jan. 8 declaration as evidence that Hezbollah has been truly disarmed or that Resolution 1701 has been fully implemented.

The Shiite movement remains a dominant political force, with representation in parliament and successive governments, and retains a large arsenal elsewhere in Lebanon. Western intelligence assessments cited by regional officials say Hezbollah has preserved or rebuilt command structures, logistics corridors and weapons caches north of the Litani, particularly in Beirut’s southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley.

Lebanese authorities also acknowledge that the southern strip is not yet free of hazards. The army says its units are still locating and filling tunnels, and demining teams continue to find unexploded bombs and rockets scattered across farmland and village streets, a danger to returning residents as well as to soldiers.

Domestic politics and the economic wager

Domestically, the campaign touches sensitive sectarian and economic nerves. Many Christian, Sunni and Druze parties have long called for Hezbollah’s disarmament and have welcomed stronger army deployments in the south. But they worry the process could stall under political pressure or be derailed by renewed fighting.

In the predominantly Shiite communities of the south, Hezbollah has for decades combined its armed role with social services and patronage. Some residents have expressed relief at a lull in rocket fire and the visible presence of national forces, but others question whether the central state can deliver security and basic services in place of the movement that has long claimed to defend them.

The government in Beirut is also betting that stronger state control will unlock financial assistance. Lebanon remains in deep economic crisis, with a collapsed currency, crippled public services and devastated infrastructure in the south after successive rounds of conflict. Donor governments and international financial institutions have signaled that large-scale reconstruction aid and investment—including in offshore gas fields near the maritime border with Israel—will depend in part on a more predictable security environment and clearer state authority along the frontier.

A fragile test case

For now, the strip between the Litani and the Blue Line has become a test ground for that approach. Soldiers at new checkpoints check IDs on roads where Hezbollah fighters once did. U.N. peacekeepers patrol fields where rocket launchers were hidden. Farmers try to clear debris and unexploded shells from groves they abandoned during the shelling.

Whether this experiment in a “state monopoly on arms” holds will depend on more than the number of checkpoints or seized rockets. It will turn on Hezbollah’s willingness to keep its armed presence out of the south, Israel’s readiness to scale back cross-border strikes, and the ability of a cash-strapped Lebanese state to convince its own citizens that its forces can protect them.

Nearly 20 years after the United Nations first demanded a demilitarized buffer in southern Lebanon, that vision has come closer to reality than ever before. The coming months will show whether it represents a durable shift in how Lebanon polices its most dangerous frontier—or a fragile achievement, vulnerable to the next spiral of violence along the border.