In the two weeks from late April to early May 2025, Israel launched two air attacks, ostensibly two air attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon: the first, on April 27, attacked a building in the southern suburb of Beirut; the second was an attack in southern Lebanon, killing one person and injuring eight others.

While the attack may not be like a distortion in the long history of Israel’s military operations in Lebanon, given the background, the latest episode is noteworthy: Israel and Hezbollah are nominally locked in a truce for five months.

As an expert in Lebanese history and culture, I think the latest violations clearly demonstrate the vulnerability of the ceasefire. But more importantly, they complicate the mission of the Lebanese government to remove Hezbollah, a paramilitary organization that, despite the targeted killing of its senior members, remains a powerful force in the country. This mission forms the backbone of a nearly 20-year-old United Nations resolution aimed at bringing lasting peace to Lebanon.

The long road to the ceasefire

Hezbollah vowed solidarity with the Palestinian movement in the wake of Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, resulting in a series of tit tat attacks with Israel, which escalated into a full-scale war in the fall of 2024.

On October 1, 2024, Israel invaded Lebanon (the sixth time since 1978) to face Hezbollah directly. The operation resulted in the killing of an estimated 3,800 Lebanese people and displaced 1 million civilians. According to the World Bank, Lebanon's economic losses are estimated at $14 billion.

Hezbollah lost many fighters, Arsenal and popular support. More importantly, these losses discredit Hezbollah’s claim that it alone can guarantee the territorial integrity of Lebanon’s invasion against Israel.

The United States and France established a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel on November 27, 2024. The agreement is based in part on UN Security Council resolution 1701, which was adopted in 2006 and ended in 2006, finally ending the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah. The resolution is the central purpose of armed militia disarmament, including Hezbollah, and the evacuation of Israeli forces from Lebanon.

The 2024 ceasefire is based on this resolution. It requires Hezbollah’s retreat, outside the Litani River, about 20 miles north of Israel. In return, by February 2025, Israel will gradually withdraw from Lebanese territory to allow Lebanese troops to control the southern region and confiscate all unauthorized weapons - a tribute to Hezbollah's arsenal.

However, Israel maintained several posts in southern Lebanon after this deadline and continued its attacks on Lebanon soil, the most recent on May 8, 2025.

Relieve Hezbollah's challenge

Despite these violations, a massive war between Israel and Hezbollah has not resumed. But the next step is to build on the lasting peace laid down by Hezbollah’s weapons, which is a complex set of factors, especially the sectarian nature of Lebanese politics.

Since its inception in 1920, Lebanon’s governance has been defined by a polarized formal political system that sows the roots of decades of conflict that began in 1975. Israeli attacks on Lebanon’s Lebanese-based Palestinian group exacerbated occupationism and instability.

From this combination, Hezbollah emerged and became a powerful force in the late 1980s.

The agreement of the Taif Agreement ended the Lebanese civil war in 1989, formally recognized the state's right to boycott Israel's occupation of Lebanese territory and used Hezbollah's existence as a resistance force. There was an uneasy coexistence between the government and Hezbollah, which often spread to violence, including assassination of important public figures.

Recently, Hezbollah was responsible for a two-year political vacuum as it mobilized its members to repeatedly block opposition candidates from serving as vacant presidents in a bid to hope to install a leader supporting its agenda.

In January 2025, the deadlock ended when the Lebanese parliament elected Army Chief Joseph Aoun as president.

The default part of Hezbollah and its allies shows that during the conflict, Israel reduced the power of Shiite militias.

But it is also the result of Lebanon's wide understanding of the humanitarian crisis caused by the Israeli war. The new president has already brought much-needed hope to a abused country - countries plagued by many crises, including a collapsed economies, pushing 80% of their population to poverty by 2019.

But Orn’s presidency represents a change in the political environment in another key way. Unlike his predecessor, Aoun did not approve of Hezbollah as a legitimate resistance movement.

In addition, Aoun announced his intention to disarm the group and fully implement Resolution 1701.

For this, Aoun made impressive gains. By the end of April 2025, Lebanese troops demolished more than 90% of the infrastructure south of the Litani River and controlled the sites, according to state officials.

However, Hezbollah head Naim Kassem stubbornly refused to call for disarmament and to include the group's combatants in the Lebanese armed forces.

Even in the weakening of Hezbollah's status, Kasem believes that his movement, rather than the Lebanese state, can guarantee Lebanon's security against Israel. Israel’s ceasefire violations will only participate in this narrative.

"We do not allow anyone to remove Hezbollah's weapons," Kasem said, saying after a recent air strike that the group would only hand over weapons if Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon and ended its air invasion.

challenge

However, countries including the United States and Qatar (not to mention Israel) consider Hezbollah’s disarmament to be a prerequisite for peace and much-needed international aid.

This makes AOUN's task difficult. He will be very aware of the urgent need for international assistance. However, it is too difficult to force Israel or Hezbollah’s interests to risk, which can exacerbate domestic political pressure or harm future foreign investment.

To further complicate things, the development of neighboring Syria has little help.

Syrian President Bashar Assad fell in December 2024, adding another element of regional uncertainty and Lebanon’s fear of further sectarian violence. Although Syria's new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa vowed to protect all religious groups, he could not prevent the massacre of Alawi civilians in several coastal towns - the attack sparked a wave of new refugees heading to Lebanon.

The removal of Assad is another blow from Hezbollah, a powerful Assad ally benefiting from Syria’s years of intervention in Lebanon.

Challenges of international relations

At present, the total war back to Lebanon does not seem to be on the table.

But what Lebanon and Hezbollah will do next depends on many factors, especially the Israeli war on Gaza and the ongoing war in Lebanon. However, actions by actors in other regions, especially Saudi Arabia and Iran, are also important. If Saudi Arabia is encouraged to follow the path of normalizing relations with Israel (the process of the 7 October attack being interrupted), then this will affect Lebanon in many ways.

From a Saudi perspective, any agreement may have to include solutions to the Palestinian national problem, thus eliminating one of Hezbollah’s main dissatisfactions. This could also put pressure on Lebanon and Israel to resolve solutions to their long-standing border disputes.

Meanwhile, Iran also appears to be turning to diplomatic means to address some of its regional problems, both nascent moves and improving ties with Saudi Arabia and through a new nuclear deal with the United States, which could disengage Tehran from policies that attempt to impact it through its armed armed team in Tehran, which is Hehezbollah.