At least 4,348 people have been killed in Lebanon since March, and much more Lebanese territory has been occupied since, while the Lebanese state has been holding direct negotiations with Israel through the presidency and embassy in Washington. The result so far is a US-backed framework that has triggered widespread opposition in Lebanon and left the basic question unchanged: who gets to decide over land, arms, and movement when states and armed movements treat civilians as bargaining chips?
The State's Monopoly
Senior Hezbollah official Nawaf Moussawi told Middle East Eye that force must be used to liberate South Lebanon because Israel will never be convinced to withdraw through negotiations alone. Speaking in a wide-ranging interview at his Beirut office, he said Lebanese-Israeli negotiations would remain fruitless as long as President Joseph Aoun comes to the table lacking any sort of leverage over the Israelis. That logic runs through the whole arrangement. The state wants a monopoly on arms. Hezbollah wants to keep its own. Ordinary people get the bill.
Moussawi, who heads Hezbollah’s border and resources department and is responsible for many Israeli affairs, said the Lebanese armed movement will continue to fight the occupying troops until they completely depart from his country. "Is there international pressure that would compel the Israelis to withdraw? So far, there is not, just as there was not in Palestine," he said. "Therefore, we have no choice but to continue fighting the Israeli occupier until it withdraws."
Hezbollah launched cross-border strikes against Israel the day after the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attacks, opening what it called a "support front" to draw resources away from Israel’s war machine as the genocide in Gaza began. Since then, Israel and Hezbollah have fought two wars. The first wiped out much of Hezbollah’s military capabilities and senior leadership, including its longtime secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah. Moussawi said, "We were fulfilling our duty towards the Palestinian resistance. It was therefore no secret that we were providing them with support wherever we could."
Negotiations Without Leverage
The second conflict, which Hezbollah launched in March, was sparked by the US-Israeli war on Iran and the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an important spiritual and political figurehead for the party. Hezbollah and Israeli media reports suggest it also pre-empted a new Israeli offensive on Lebanon after a 15-month period when Israel constantly violated a cease-fire and entrenched itself in occupied territory along the border. The language of cease-fire and diplomacy sits there, but the facts on the ground keep moving in the opposite direction.
Moussawi said blame should be reversed. He argued that the Israelis, as the occupying force, are culpable. "At one point, Israeli propaganda claimed that Fatah was the problem. Now, the problem is said to be Hamas. In the future, the problem will be said to be any Palestinian organisation that seeks to work towards liberating its land," he said. "The problem, therefore, is always the occupation, not the organisation resisting that occupation. For example, they now say that Hezbollah is the problem."
He added that Israel would have a problem with any organisation expressing the will of the Lebanese people to liberate their land, "even if it was called the Democratic Party of America". He said the US-backed Israeli attacks on Palestine and Lebanon since October 2023 have tried to inflict such devastation that "people whose land is occupied feel that resistance is not an option, because it will lead to their destruction". He also said the Palestinian people tried negotiations through the Palestine Liberation Organisation "to the very end, yet did not obtain a Palestinian state".
Since April, the Lebanese state has held direct negotiations with Israel seeking a permanent cease-fire, the withdrawal of Israeli troops and a way to decouple Lebanon from the war on Iran. Those talks produced a US-backed framework that seeks to lay out a path toward ending hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah. Hezbollah has denounced it as failing to guarantee Israel’s full withdrawal from the six percent of Lebanese territory it continues to occupy and the return of hundreds of thousands of displaced residents to the south.
Moussawi, who previously served as head of the party’s foreign relations department and an MP, said he has been highly critical of how the Lebanese state’s negotiations with Israel have been conducted. "So far, the Lebanese authorities have not achieved any result," he told MEE. As part of the framework, the Lebanese military has been allowed by Israeli troops to deploy in one village in south Lebanon, even though the Israelis never occupied it in the first place. Talks to secure more villages currently under Israeli occupation have so far been unsuccessful, especially as bombings and skirmishes become more frequent.
Who Gets the Guns
"The problem with the negotiations which the president of the republic has now entered into is that he did so without national unity," Moussawi said. "In other words, what he is doing does not have the approval of the Lebanese political forces. In Lebanon, such steps must be supported by national consensus."
He said negotiations with Israel require leverage. Moussawi suggested Aoun may have achieved better results if he had worked in lockstep with Hezbollah, using its armed resistance as a pressure point on the Israelis. "The resistance, for example, is a source of strength, but he chose to place himself in confrontation with the resistance," he said. "How can you achieve liberation when you are at odds with your own people? That is the president's problem."
"Our way of returning our people to the south is to liberate their land. Liberating the land requires fighting the Israeli occupier and driving it back," he said. "That is what we did in 2000. This is our path."
If Aoun had secured an Israeli withdrawal, Moussawi said, he would have made himself a hero. "He has not even been able to stop the destruction within the occupied villages," he added. "Despite all the concessions made by the president, the Israelis did not grant him a single gain. Therefore, we have no choice but to resist."
Days after Hezbollah launched six rockets at Israel on 2 March in response to Khamenei’s killing, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam outlawed Hezbollah military activity. Salam insists the state must have a monopoly on the use of arms. Since then, there has been pressure from Israel, Washington and some domestically for the Lebanese military to take a more proactive and confrontational role with Hezbollah and its potential disarmament.
Moussawi believes the framework was designed to create that scenario, "to shift the problem into Lebanon itself, so that the Lebanese would fight among themselves instead of fighting the Israeli occupier". He said, "I do not believe that anyone in Lebanon could take up arms against the resistance to the occupation, because that would mean their own destruction before the destruction of Lebanon." He asked, "Does the president of the republic intend to fight the resistance?" and added that even if he were thinking in this way, he could not do it, because "the army and security services in Lebanon do not belong to the president. They belong to the Lebanese people, and the Lebanese people will not fight among themselves."
Moussawi also dismissed a scenario proposed by US President Donald Trump in which Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa would use his country’s army to confront Hezbollah. He called it "wishful thinking that cannot become reality". He noted that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently said that Turkey’s security begins in Beirut. "Of course, he was speaking in the context of confronting Israeli expansion," Moussawi said. "How, then, could the new Syrian government, which is allied with Turkey, become an instrument for advancing Benjamin Netanyahu's interests and expanding his power in the region?"
He opened the possibility of dialogue with Damascus via Ankara. "We are engaged in genuine and effective dialogue with Turkey, through which new avenues can be opened with the emerging actors in the region."
After the 2024 war, Hezbollah’s military wing appeared badly degraded. Most of its leadership and commanders had been killed, as well as their deputies, and it seemed unable to go toe to toe with Israel anytime soon, if ever. But MEE reported earlier this month that the party reorganised itself and doubled down on its drone programme, which it staffed with video gamers. Moussawi acknowledged that Hezbollah had been badly penetrated by Israeli intelligence, "but it is now fighting a generation it does not know". He said this fourth generation of Hezbollah military commanders "were not included on the targeting lists, whether for intelligence or operational purposes". "Therefore, the brothers now operate with greater ease than their brothers who were martyred before them," he noted.