The agreement reached between Lebanon and Israel under American auspices does not appear to be a fair one. It may well trigger internal confrontations in Lebanon that could escalate into civil war.
The agreement contains 14 articles, most of which are drafted in a deliberately vague and generalized manner. However, what stands out more than anything else is a cluster of formulations that, in my view, could bring down the Lebanese government.
The text uses the term “progressive redeployment” rather than “full and complete withdrawal”. This effectively could legitimize a prolonged Israeli military presence, along the lines of what happened in the West Bank after the Oslo Accords. By using “progressive redeployment” instead of an unequivocal withdrawal, the text appears to grant Israel military flexibility to reposition and entrench itself in strategic points inside Lebanese territory under the pretext of security needs. This mirrors the language of the Oslo Accords (Areas A, B, and C), which were used to justify continued Israeli security control and the non-withdrawal from the West Bank. That framework opened the door to the seizure of large swathes of land for illegal Israeli settlements, the fragmentation of the West Bank, and the practical impossibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state. A similar outcome could emerge in Lebanon, especially after the agreement requires the weakening or elimination of armed resistance. The agreement does not impose a binding timetable for Israeli withdrawal. Instead, it links “progressive redeployment” to the complete disarmament of Hezbollah, a condition that is nearly impossible to fulfill, thereby giving Israel a continuing justification to remain.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the arrangement as a “pilot program” and stated that the Israeli military would prepare for a “lengthy stay” in the security zone in the south. In doing so, the agreement reproduces the model of the Oslo interim arrangements, which morphed into a permanent reality. The American “verification” mechanism grants Washington and Israel broad discretionary authority to assess Lebanon’s compliance with disarmament, allowing them to suspend any withdrawal based on alleged security infractions.
The agreement restricts the right to defend against occupation or aggression to the Lebanese state alone, a state that does not currently possess a military capable of repelling a large-scale Israeli assault. This effectively amounts to acquiescence to occupation indefinitely. This is a major weakness. Articles 6 and 7 prohibit any armed action outside the state framework, stripping Lebanon of any credible deterrent. The Lebanese army lacks air defense systems or any meaningful deterrent capability. The United States and European countries refuse to supply it with appropriate weapons, fearing they might eventually be used against Israel. Thus, Lebanon’s security becomes entirely dependent on Israeli commitments—which, as past agreements with the Palestinians suggest, have often proved unreliable—and on international will, which has been conspicuously absent whenever Israel is concerned, as demonstrated by the experience of Gaza and, before that, the Oslo Accords.
Article 13 of the agreement includes a Lebanese waiver of the right to prosecute Israeli war criminals. It stipulates the cessation of “all hostile or negative actions in international political or legal forums.”
Legal experts argue that this article prevents Lebanon from granting the International Criminal Court jurisdiction to investigate alleged Israeli war crimes and could effectively eliminate any realistic prospect of UN fact-finding missions. The Lebanese National Human Rights Institution has described this as a renunciation of the victims’ right to justice, as it effectively means the Lebanese government accepts the destruction of homes in the south and the erasure of southern Lebanese families from civil records.
Ultimately, the legal and political problem with this agreement lies in the gap between its wording and Lebanese reality, and whether the implementation guarantees actually protect Lebanese sovereignty from the text’s loopholes. The agreement opens the door to unrest and clashes—which we have already begun to witness in Lebanon—and potentially to civil war. This may represent the greatest danger that most analysts identify. The agreement obliges the Lebanese government (in Articles 4 and 9) to completely disarm “all non-state armed groups,” but it provides no clear or implementable mechanism to achieve this. This requirement far exceeds the Lebanese army’s current logistical and military capabilities, placing it in direct confrontation with Hezbollah and the complex social and military environment it belongs to. This is a scenario that the Lebanese army commander himself has warned against, fearing a slide into civil war. Hezbollah has rejected the agreement, calling it humiliating, and its parliamentary bloc has warned that pressure on the party could push the country toward internal conflict. Popular protests erupted in Beirut immediately after the signing, reflecting the intensity of polarization. The implementation details of disarmament have been postponed to a “Security Annex” that has not yet been disclosed or agreed upon, making the provision a commitment without a roadmap—what several observers have described as “a recipe for disaster.”
The agreement thus presents an extremely difficult equation for Lebanon. It imposes near-impossible obligations (disarming Hezbollah) in exchange for non-binding Israeli promises (“redeployment,” not withdrawal). It strips Lebanon of its legal tools (Article 13) and military deterrent (restricting the right of self-defense), all in the absence of genuine guarantees for its sovereignty. This makes Lebanon vulnerable to either permanent occupation or internal violence.
