Lebanon’s pilot-zone test is failing as Hezbollah returned behind the Lebanese Armed Forces
Lebanon’s first test of replacing Israeli military control with Lebanese state authority in the south is showing signs of fundamental failure. In Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh, the first area transferred to Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) control under the U.S.-brokered framework, Hezbollah-linked personnel and organizations are operating inside the town while the army controls access but does not appear to be conducting the systematic inspections required to ensure that Hezbollah’s military network cannot reconstitute itself.
The weakness is visible starting with the point of entry to the town - vehicles pass the main LAF checkpoint without any identification checks or searches. Inside the town Hezbollah members, including its local rabet, alongside Hezbollah-affiliated organizations such as the Islamic Health Organization and Wa Taawanou arr operating as usual. There is no evidence of comprehensive searches of private properties, systematic weapons confiscations or dismantling of Hezbollah infrastructure.
The LAF, meanwhile, appears to define its immediate mission more narrowly, emphasizing unexploded ordnance removal, rubble clearance and facilitating residents’ return rather than making Hezbollah’s disarmament its primary operational task.
That creates the central problem with the model: Lebanese deployment and Lebanese sovereignty are not necessarily the same thing. An LAF checkpoint can replace an Israeli position on a map, but if it cannot verify who and what enters behind it, Hezbollah can potentially preserve or rebuild its network beneath the umbrella of state control. The framework therefore risks producing a change in the visible security authority without producing the strategic objective on which further Israeli withdrawals depend - the verified removal of Hezbollah’s armed infrastructure.
A local from Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh said the town has now a large number of military-aged men he identified as Hezbollah members and said: There hasn’t yet been a case that we can point to in Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh, which has been cleared, where we can say that the Lebanese army is dismantling weapons depots or dismantling [Hezbollah] infrastructure.
Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh is consequently becoming a test not merely of whether the LAF can deploy, but whether it can actually enforce a monopoly on armed force. If Hezbollah continues operating behind Lebanese lines without meaningful inspections, confiscation and verification, expanding the model to additional areas risks reproducing the same structural weakness across southern Lebanon: Israeli forces withdraw, the LAF moves in, but Hezbollah retains enough freedom of action to regenerate behind the Lebanese state rather than being replaced by it.
Lebanon’s first test of replacing Israeli military control with Lebanese state authority in the south is showing signs of fundamental failure. In Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh, the first area transferred to Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) control under the U.S.-brokered framework, Hezbollah-linked personnel and organizations are operating inside the town while the army controls access but does not appear to be conducting the systematic inspections required to ensure that Hezbollah’s military network cannot reconstitute itself.
The weakness is visible starting with the point of entry to the town - vehicles pass the main LAF checkpoint without any identification checks or searches. Inside the town Hezbollah members, including its local rabet, alongside Hezbollah-affiliated organizations such as the Islamic Health Organization and Wa Taawanou arr operating as usual. There is no evidence of comprehensive searches of private properties, systematic weapons confiscations or dismantling of Hezbollah infrastructure.
The LAF, meanwhile, appears to define its immediate mission more narrowly, emphasizing unexploded ordnance removal, rubble clearance and facilitating residents’ return rather than making Hezbollah’s disarmament its primary operational task.
That creates the central problem with the model: Lebanese deployment and Lebanese sovereignty are not necessarily the same thing. An LAF checkpoint can replace an Israeli position on a map, but if it cannot verify who and what enters behind it, Hezbollah can potentially preserve or rebuild its network beneath the umbrella of state control. The framework therefore risks producing a change in the visible security authority without producing the strategic objective on which further Israeli withdrawals depend - the verified removal of Hezbollah’s armed infrastructure.
A local from Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh said the town has now a large number of military-aged men he identified as Hezbollah members and said: There hasn’t yet been a case that we can point to in Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh, which has been cleared, where we can say that the Lebanese army is dismantling weapons depots or dismantling [Hezbollah] infrastructure.
Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh is consequently becoming a test not merely of whether the LAF can deploy, but whether it can actually enforce a monopoly on armed force. If Hezbollah continues operating behind Lebanese lines without meaningful inspections, confiscation and verification, expanding the model to additional areas risks reproducing the same structural weakness across southern Lebanon: Israeli forces withdraw, the LAF moves in, but Hezbollah retains enough freedom of action to regenerate behind the Lebanese state rather than being replaced by it.