New Leaders in Lebanon Face Test as Israel Is Poised to Keep Troops There

When Israel and Hezbollah signed a temporary truce in November, the agreement was hailed as a first step toward ending Lebanon’s deadliest war in decades.

Both Hezbollah and Israel agreed to withdraw their forces from southern Lebanon within 60 days. The Lebanese Army and U.N. peacekeepers would secure the area. And if the truce held, negotiators hoped the agreement would become permanent, returning a measure of calm to a turbulent region.

But as the 60-day truce expired on Sunday, a very different scenario was taking shape.

Israeli forces appeared poised to remain in parts of southern Lebanon, stoking fears among Lebanese of a sustained Israeli occupation and renewed hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah. Averting those prospects is a critical test for Lebanon’s new leaders, President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Nawaf Salam, as they seek to wrestle back political control from Hezbollah, the country’s dominant political and military force.

Any prolonged Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon could breathe new life into Hezbollah, a group that was founded to liberate Lebanon from Israeli occupation and that has portrayed itself as the only force capable of protecting Lebanon’s borders, experts say.

It also threatens to derail the current political momentum in Lebanon, where for the first time in decades there is a serious push to consolidate all military power within the state, and do away with Hezbollah’s justification for its vast arsenal.

The focus in Lebanon now is toward “disarming Hezbollah and transitioning from the era in which Hezbollah was seen as having the right to acquire weapons,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy director for research at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. Any prolonged Israeli occupation “would put the breaks on that momentum, which is happening organically,” he added.

Israeli officials have cited concerns that Hezbollah remains active in southern Lebanon and doubts about the Lebanese Army’s ability to stymie the group. Hezbollah officials did not respond to these accusations but said they were “committed” to upholding the terms of the truce.

On Saturday, Lebanese Army officials said they were prepared to complete their deployment in the south but had been delayed “as a result of the procrastination in the withdrawal by the Israeli enemy,” according to a Lebanese Army statement.

The 60-day truce took effect more than a year after Hezbollah began firing rockets toward Israeli positions in solidarity with its ally Hamas, the Palestinian militant group in Gaza that led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Israel retaliated by assassinating Hezbollah’s leadership, leveling towns and villages along the border and invading southern Lebanon.

Before Sunday’s deadline, thousands of Lebanese who were displaced by the war from homes along the southern border were preparing to return home. On Saturday, the main highway leading from the capital, Beirut, to southern Lebanon was packed with cars. Few people seemed deterred by the news of Israeli forces remaining in parts of the south or the automated phone calls from the Israeli military on Saturday warning them not to return home.

“You are forbidden to go back to your home until further notice,” the automated voice said. “Anyone driving south is putting their life at risk.”

Israeli forces appeared to be continuing efforts that persisted during the 60-day truce to bulldoze and block roads between some villages in southern Lebanon, according to local media. Israel currently occupies roughly 70 percent of the areas that it captured after invading Lebanon last fall, according to the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon.

The Lebanese Army also warned about the dangers of unexploded ordnance in some villages and towns. Still, few Lebanese appeared dissuaded from returning home.

“The people of the land will force their way in,” said Abed al Karim Hasan, a banana farmer in Maaliye, a village in southern Lebanon, whose home was destroyed during the war. “If I had a house there, I would go there first thing tomorrow.”

Hezbollah has not said how it plans to respond to Israel’s continued occupation of Lebanese soil. On Friday, Hezbollah officials warned in a statement that if Israeli forces remained in Lebanon beyond Sunday, it would amount to “an attack on Lebanese sovereignty and the beginning of a new chapter of occupation.”

Some Hezbollah lawmakers have vowed retaliation. But other officials from Hezbollah — which has been militarily and politically battered in recent months — instead shifted responsibility for responding to Israel to the Lebanese government. The group’s statement on Friday said that it was up to the state “to reclaim the land and wrest it from the grip of the occupation.”

That shifting of responsibility is a tried-and-true tactic for Hezbollah, which just a few months ago had called on the state to provide for thousands of Lebanese displaced by a war it had pulled the country into. Still, the political posturing from a group whose founding principle is resisting Israeli occupation reflects Hezbollah’s current weakened state.

After 14 months of fighting, the Shiite Muslim group’s military ranks are battered, and its loyal support base is weary after months of displacement and destruction. Its patron Iran has also been weakened by Israel, casting doubt over Iran’s ability to provide millions of dollars for rebuilding the homes of Hezbollah supporters in Lebanon, as it did after Hezbollah’s monthlong war with Israel in 2006.

And in neighboring Syria, rebels toppled an Iran ally, the dictator Bashar al-Assad, cutting off Hezbollah’s land bridge for receiving weapons and cash from Iran.

These blows have loosened Hezbollah’s once iron grasp on political power in Lebanon, shifting the country’s political sands for the first time in decades. Earlier this month, Lebanese lawmakers elected a new president, Mr. Aoun, after years of political gridlock that many analysts had attributed to Hezbollah. Days later, lawmakers named Mr. Salam, a prominent diplomat whom Hezbollah had long opposed, as prime minister.

In a country where no major political decision had been made without Hezbollah’s blessing for years, those developments underscored just how much ground the group has lost.

But Middle East experts have warned against writing off Hezbollah’s political weight just yet. And if Israel continues to occupy Lebanon, it could revitalize the group’s mostly Shiite Muslim support base as it looks for a patron and protector against Israeli forces.

“I believe neither parties have an interest in resuming the war,” said Sami Nader, the director of the Institute of Political Science at Saint Joseph University of Beirut. “But as long as Israel is occupying Lebanon, it’s reviving the narrative of Hezbollah.”

Sara Chaito contributed reporting.