The Media Line: Does Lebanon Need a Third Party To Clear Hezbollah From Israel’s Border? 

Does Lebanon Need a Third Party To Clear Hezbollah From Israel’s Border? 

Marwan Abdallah, head of the Foreign Affairs Department at the Lebanese Kataeb Party, told TML: “You need a third entity, and I think the US army is the partner of the Lebanese armed forces and, of course, is the partner of the Israelis.” 

By Giorgia Valente / The Media Line 

The meeting between Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and US President Donald Trump in Washington last week carried substantial symbolism, but the more difficult test is unfolding far from the White House: across southern Lebanon and along the regional corridors that have historically supplied Hezbollah with weapons.  

Aoun’s July 21 meeting with President Trump came as a US-brokered framework between Lebanon and Israel entered an early and delicate implementation phase. The discussions centered on Hezbollah’s weapons, strengthening the Lebanese Armed Forces and securing an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory, while also touching on a longer-term objective that until recently would have been politically difficult for a Lebanese president to articulate so openly.  

During the meeting, Aoun described the framework’s ultimate goal as “ending the state of hostility between Lebanon and Israel forever,” framing stability not simply as a temporary ceasefire but as part of a longer process intended to prevent Lebanon from returning repeatedly to conflict.   

That longer-term ambition remains dependent on developments on the ground. Israeli forces have begun withdrawing from designated areas in southern Lebanon, allowing Lebanese army units to deploy as part of a pilot model intended to test whether the state can progressively assume exclusive security responsibility. The process is expected to remain gradual, with its expansion dependent on the implementation of the broader framework and the ability of the Lebanese Armed Forces to maintain control after Israeli withdrawals.   

An initial major test is taking place in southern Lebanon, where Lebanese forces are beginning to assume responsibility for areas following Israeli withdrawals under the US-brokered framework. The pilot-zone approach is intended to determine whether the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) can achieve sustainable control while preventing the reemergence of independent armed infrastructure outside state authority.  

Marwan Abdallah, head of the Foreign Affairs Department at the Lebanese Kataeb Party, said the process would require continued external guarantees: “So, now we are waiting to see the implementation. We saw …  before the meeting in the White House, the Lebanese army started taking control of two areas in South Lebanon, as per the framework agreement.” 

He added: “You need a third entity, and I think the US army is the partner of the Lebanese armed forces and, of course, is the partner of the Israelis, so they can play a role in being the monitoring side and being the one that guarantees the agreement between both sides.”  

Joe Truzman, a Middle East independent analyst, described the same areas as a test of a much larger question: whether the Lebanese state can become the sole security authority in the south.  

“The pilot zones are designed to test whether the Lebanese Armed Forces can assume responsibility for territory following Israeli withdrawals under the US-brokered framework while preventing Hezbollah from re-establishing an armed presence. Success would strengthen confidence in the Lebanese state’s ability to become the sole security actor,” he said.  

He nevertheless cautioned that “the Lebanese government’s previous disarmament efforts stalled and produced only partial results in the south.”  

The next phase, he added, will depend on several actors moving in parallel.  

“Expansion will depend on sustained LAF performance, Israeli confidence that Hezbollah is not reconstituting its military infrastructure, Hezbollah’s own response, and continued external political and financial support for the Lebanese state and its army,” he noted. 

For Abdallah, however, the issue extends beyond Hezbollah’s missiles alone and concerns the broader parallel structures the group maintains outside state authority.  

“I have a problem with Hezbollah’s missiles, drones, military units, assassination units, small bombs, small weapons, medium weapons, everything that Hezbollah has, ideology, education institutions, financial institutions,” he said.  

Abdallah described these as “illegal and illegitimate ways of Hezbollah gaining more power and gaining more control over their population.”  

The Washington meeting was important partly because of what Abdallah sees as a change in Lebanon’s international standing.  

“It’s not easy to be received this way by Trump. … Okay, now Lebanon is back on the map. Lebanon is a country that’s respected as a sovereign nation, as a partner, not just as a state who is a source of trouble and the problems,”  he told The Media Line.  

The meeting also produced a significant change in aviation policy. President Trump announced that he was directing his administration to allow US airlines to operate direct flights to Lebanon, reversing a restriction dating to 1985. The announcement does not mean that flights will immediately begin, since actual service will still depend on regulatory requirements and decisions by individual airlines. But after more than four decades without direct US-carrier service, the move carries symbolic weight for a country seeking to present itself again as a viable destination for international business, tourism and investment.   

Abdallah described the significance in precisely those terms: “But again, it’s not just about the flight itself. It’s about what it represents:  a renewed trust in Lebanon … that these flights can be secure and protected.”   

Truzman offered a more cautious assessment, noting that the political announcement remains separate from the technical and commercial steps needed before regular connections can actually resume.  

“The announcement regarding direct US–Lebanon commercial flights is important but remains contingent on FAA/TSA security certification and airline decisions. It should be viewed as a conditional commitment that links deeper economic engagement to improvements in Lebanon’s security environment,” he told The Media Line.  

Taken together, the aviation announcement and Aoun’s comments on ending the state of hostility with Israel point toward a wider theme surrounding his Washington visit: an attempt to reposition Lebanon internationally while rebuilding the authority of the state internally.  

But the credibility of that effort will depend primarily on implementation.  

Hezbollah’s military position has historically been connected to a wider regional logistical system linking Iran to its allies through Iraq and Syria. Recent interceptions suggest that parts of this network are now facing greater pressure.  

Syrian authorities have announced multiple seizures of weapons allegedly intended for Hezbollah. In one particularly significant case in July, Syrian authorities said they intercepted a shipment near the Iraqi border containing missiles, anti-tank weapons and drones that preliminary investigations indicated were destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah denied the allegation. Iraq subsequently announced an investigation into how the shipment reached the Syrian border and established a committee to examine the case and coordinate with Damascus.   

The developments raise the possibility that pressure on Hezbollah is increasingly operating on two interconnected levels: restricting its military infrastructure inside Lebanon while making it more difficult to regenerate that infrastructure through supply lines extending across the region.  

Abdallah sees the developments in Syria and Iraq as part of a broader decline in Iranian influence.  

“I think that what the US is managing to do is taking these countries out of the grip of the Iranians,”  he said, adding, “And I think today, not even Sanaa, maybe Teheran still control the Houthis, but the other three capitals in the Arab world Baghdad, Beirut and Damascus are out of Iranian control, and it’s a big achievement, not just for the US, but for the people of these countries,” he noted.  

He also interpreted President Trump’s references to a possible Syrian role against Hezbollah as relating primarily to the group’s logistical infrastructure rather than to Syrian forces operating inside Lebanon.  

“I think what Trump means whenever he says that he wants the Syrians to interfere, to disarm Hezbollah, I think what he means is not the Syrian army entering Lebanon, but he means that Syria dismantling and destroying all the military infrastructure and the tunnels and the supply routes that Hezbollah and Iran made inside Syria for decades,” he said.  

Truzman, however, warned against interpreting individual interceptions as evidence that Hezbollah’s broader supply architecture has already been dismantled.  

“I do not assess it as realistic to meaningfully degrade Hezbollah’s supply network without sustained cooperation from both Syria and Iraq. The logistics architecture is regional rather than linear: disrupting one corridor increases costs but does not eliminate the network,” he said.  

Truzman added: “While Damascus has become a more active partner in interdicting weapons flows, Iraq remains the more uncertain variable, with uneven willingness among state institutions and Iran-aligned militias to enforce restrictions. Moreover, Tehran retains the capacity to adapt by rerouting shipments through alternative corridors, including maritime routes.”  

The distinction is important. Weapons seizures and investigations can make supply operations more costly and difficult, but the longer-term impact will depend on sustained cooperation between governments whose ability and willingness to confront Iran-aligned networks remain uneven.  

Similar uncertainty surrounds the pilot zones themselves.  

For the Lebanese army, expanding state authority without triggering an internal confrontation with Hezbollah remains one of the central challenges of the process.  

“This remains a significant undertaking for the LAF, which has so far avoided direct confrontation with Hezbollah to preserve domestic stability,” Truzman said. “Hezbollah is likely to resist any expansion, generating friction between the state and the group that could stall enforcement and, at the extreme, risk internal conflict,” he added.  

For Abdallah and the Kataeb Party, by contrast, the central objective is the complete removal of Hezbollah’s independent military infrastructure.  

“So it’s a new page for the country. It’s a new era. However, all this optimism cannot be achieved if we don’t solve the biggest problem, which is Hezbollah’s weapons and Hezbollah’s infrastructure,” he said.  

Abdallah argued that disarmament could eventually open the way to an Israeli withdrawal and a different form of relationship across the border.  

“But we all agree that when Hezbollah is disarmed, then there’s no out-of-the-state threat for anyone in Lebanon or in Israel. Then the Israelis will withdraw, and we are already discussing having a new track for the negotiations that will discuss the border between the two countries,” he noted.  

That prospect now sits alongside Aoun’s own public language about ultimately ending the state of hostility with Israel. It does not mean that normalization or a peace agreement is imminent. Lebanon and Israel remain technically at war, Israeli troops remain inside Lebanese territory, and fundamental disagreements persist over withdrawal, security and Hezbollah’s weapons. But the language emerging from Washington indicates that the political horizon being discussed is increasingly broader than another temporary ceasefire.   

Abdallah also argued that any future agreement would need support inside Lebanon rather than relying solely on external backing.  

“So I think it can have the foreign support that is needed, but also we need to have the domestic support that we need for this agreement,” he said.  

Truzman similarly sees a more stable relationship as conceivable, while noting that it would carry direct implications for Hezbollah’s political narrative.  

“Furthermore, a stable relationship between Beirut and Jerusalem is conceivable, but such an outcome would directly erode Hezbollah’s long-standing claim to legitimacy as an armed ‘resistance’ movement whose raison d’être is resistance against Israel,” he noted.  

Against that backdrop, the possible restoration of direct US flights also acquires greater significance. On its own, an aviation decision cannot alter Lebanon’s security balance. Symbolically, however, it fits into the same attempt to move the country away from decades in which its international image has been dominated by conflict, armed groups and instability.  

The coming phase will therefore be measured less by statements made in Washington than by whether several processes can advance simultaneously: the Lebanese army consolidating control in the south, Israeli forces continuing their withdrawal, Hezbollah refraining from rebuilding military infrastructure in transferred areas, and Syria and Iraq sustaining efforts against cross-border weapons networks.  

“Taken together, these developments suggest an increasingly coherent American strategic concept that combines pressure on Iranian proxy networks with incentives to strengthen state institutions in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq,” Truzman said.  

“The strategy’s long-term success, however, remains uncertain and depends on implementation across multiple theaters,” he added.  

The Aoun–Trump meeting may therefore prove significant not because it resolved Lebanon’s fundamental security questions, but because it brought several previously separate tracks into the same political framework: the restoration of Lebanese state authority, the disruption of Hezbollah’s regional supply system, Israeli withdrawal, economic and international reintegration, and, ultimately, the possibility of moving from recurrent confrontation toward a more stable relationship across the Lebanese-Israeli border.  

Whether those objectives can be translated from diplomatic language into lasting realities on the ground remains the central test.