This case is interesting for several reasons:

• UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) was established in 1978. In 48 years, this international peacekeeping force has failed to prevent Israel’s regular invasions, its occupation of Lebanon, or Hezbollah’s construction of tunnels and stockpiling of weapons. While this peacekeeping force is an expression of international goodwill, it also reveals international powerlessness and ineffectiveness.
• Successive agreements have included some form of ceasefire monitoring system, but it has never worked: there is no visible effect on the ground, even if there may have been instances where incidents were mitigated.
• The current agreements between Israel and Lebanon are rejected by Hezbollah. How can we hope for a controlled evolution when one party consistently rejects everything?
• Virtually all Iranian proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, Yemen) adopt an attitude of defiance, if not outright rupture, toward their countries’ official authorities (Hamas against the Palestinian Authority, Hezbollah against the Lebanese state, the Houthis against the Yemeni government). Some proxies are “advised” directly by the Revolutionary Guards (Houthis, Hezbollah), particularly regarding military operations, which are carried out with Iranian military assistance and, in some cases, under Iranian command. There is no known case in which an Iranian proxy has helped reestablish a central authority or agreed to completely disarm at Iran’s request. The counterexample of Hamas is not significant, since it is militarily imposed. Although Iran claims not to interfere in the affairs of the countries concerned, it—through its Revolutionary Guards—cannot help but pull the strings, often without any acknowledged coordination with Iranian official authorities, even when there is coordination among various actors, as we have seen recently.
• Israel refuses to engage in cooperation but attempts to maintain de facto authority, claiming to be the sole supervisory authority and reserving the right to intervene at any time.
• This is, unfortunately, a typical case where state-of-the-art approaches (peacekeeping forces, pseudo-supervision) are implemented yet have virtually no effect for multiple and complex reasons.

That shouldn’t prevent us from considering other approaches that might work. Southern Lebanon will have to get back on its feet, without Hezbollah and without Israel, but that won’t happen overnight. It will happen, but perhaps in a few years.

Lebanon served as a testing ground for new ideas from the 1970s to the 1990s. It was an interesting experiment, but one that is difficult to move forward without addressing the structural weakness of the Lebanese state, rooted in its sectarian system. If change ever comes, it will have to transcend the sectarian political insularity that has turned this weakness into a source of privilege. Preserving sectarian appearances will not save Lebanon from its own refusal to exist as a state. In Lebanon, one’s community of origin is more important than the state and is the sole entity managing the so-called “state” registries, which are in fact purely communal. A non-political “council of communities” could put an end to this, but it would require a courage that is lacking among the community leaders.

September 23, 2026

Naej DRANER (naej.draner@gmail.com)