In Lebanon, political change is measured by the language that frames it rather than by its immediate effects. Words evolve before actions do, and older terms are gradually replaced.
Over roughly a year, official statements have moved from advocating Hezbollah’s “disarmament” to limiting its weapons to state control, finally settling on the more flexible concept of “containment.”
This may appear to be a linguistic detail. But in a country accustomed to gray compromises, language cannot be read outside politics. Between “disarmament” and “containment” lies a wide legal and political distance. Has the decision truly changed, or only the dictionary?
A Slowing Pace
After the ceasefire agreement with Israel in November 2024, the term “disarming Hezbollah” quickly dominated Lebanese media reports and political speeches as the natural headline of the new phase.
But the trajectory did not proceed at the same pace. On Aug. 5, 2025, the government issued a decision tasking the Lebanese Army with drafting a plan to “restrict weapons to the hands of the state.” Here, the expression shifted from “disarmament” to “restriction.”
In December, the shift deepened when Prime Minister Nawaf Salam stressed that the plan was based on “restricting weapons south of the Litani River and containing them to the north.” The path had thus changed: from “disarmament,” to “restriction,” then to “containment.”
At the start of 2026, the government announced completion of the first phase south of the Litani River, except for points where Israeli forces remain deployed. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu questioned the Lebanese account, saying efforts by the Lebanese government and army to disarm Hezbollah were “encouraging but insufficient,” and stressing that the ceasefire agreement calls for the group’s full disarmament.
Terms in the Balance of Law
In Lebanon’s debate over weapons, words are not merely descriptive tools. Each term carries legal weight and political consequences.
Political analyst and lawyer Amin Bashir stresses that the term “disarmament” bears a decisive legal meaning. In his view, it means “ending any presence of armed organizations outside the framework of the state and considering illegal weapons a crime in itself requiring decisive treatment.” In that case, “the state holds the position of decision and implementation, not negotiation or regulation, and any delay or refusal to surrender becomes an explicit violation requiring compulsory measures.”
By contrast, the phrase “restricting weapons to the hands of the state,” Bashir says, does not include a direct description of illegitimacy nor a clear declaration of criminality. “It is closer to a regulatory approach than to a decisive legal declaration. If a party delays handing over its weapons, the matter remains within the framework of arrangements and deadlines and does not automatically shift to forced implementation, as in the case of disarmament.”
The term “containment,” he explains to the Alhurra website, represents the most flexible stage. It refers to “keeping weapons under a certain level of supervision without directly challenging their ownership or existence.” He characterizes this approach as “managing the conflict rather than resolving it,” reflecting a government tendency to ease political tensions, even if it comes at the cost of legal clarity.
A “Sleeper Cell”?
Retired Brig. Gen. Yarab Sakhr reads this progression in terminology as a political, not linguistic, indicator. In his view, the most precise formula remains “disarmament,” as stipulated by the UN Security Council in Resolution 1559, which called for dissolving and disarming all militias, alongside Resolutions 1701 and 1680—consistent, he says, with the Lebanese Constitution’s principle of exclusive state control over weapons.
In statements to the Alhurra website, Sakhr says the shift to “restricting weapons” can be understood in light of internal complexities and the stance of President Joseph Aoun, who has emphasized avoiding “hurting the party’s feelings after its defeat in the last war.” However, in his view, the move to “containment” amounts to “a circumvention of the core mission of implementing the ceasefire agreement and international resolutions.”
More dangerously, he argues, “containment” effectively means freezing the weapons rather than receiving them—keeping them as a sleeper cell capable of reactivation when circumstances change. Here, the difference in terminology becomes a difference in outcome: between ending the phenomenon or postponing it under the banner of crisis management.
Conversely, Charles Jabbour, head of media and communications for the Lebanese Forces, says to Alhurra that the issue is not changing terminology but “a political and security process that began south of the Litani and moved north, despite Hezbollah’s rejection and its view that the government’s Aug. 5 decision to disarm it was a sin.”
He adds that the government “approved the second-phase plan within a clear timetable, confirming no distinction between south and north of the Litani.”
External and Internal Pressure
The linguistic shift did not occur in a vacuum. It coincided with growing international pressure to consolidate the state’s monopoly over weapons, alongside domestic pressure fearing that moving too far could trigger open confrontation with Hezbollah and lead to an unpredictable political and security explosion. Between these limits, vocabulary—and the ceiling of policy—shifted.
The Israeli Alma Research and Education Center noted that the discourse of “containment” has spread beyond Lebanese debate, appearing among U.S. officials amid concerns of escalation with Israel due to the Lebanese Army’s failure to disarm Hezbollah south of the Litani.
The institute added that statements by U.S. special envoy Tom Barrack in November 2025 – indicating it was unlikely the Lebanese government would succeed in disarming Hezbollah – helped push discussion inside Lebanon toward softer alternatives to full disarmament.
Bashir believes the government is adopting two parallel discourses: one directed outward, responding to pressure for exclusive state control over weapons; the other directed inward, reassuring Hezbollah’s constituency that the approach will not take the form of confrontation or criminalization.
In his view, the absence of a clear government decision to dissolve all militias has placed the issue in a “maze of terminology,” keeping the state in a crisis-management posture rather than resolving it while awaiting a regional settlement that could redefine what is possible inside Lebanon.
A “Red Line”
On the opposing side, Hezbollah’s language appears unchanged. Secretary-General Naim Qassem repeatedly says the group’s weapons are a “red line,” asserting that the problem is not their existence but those seeking to remove them.
Operationally, Sakhr lists several observations more than a year into the process. He considers the first phase south of the Litani “still questionable,” and says the second-phase plan “arrived late and vague regarding deadlines and implementation mechanisms, set at four months extendable without sufficient clarity.”
He argues that setting deadlines is “a political decision led by the executive authority,” while the file is being managed, in his description, “centrally by the president without involving ministers or even the prime minister,” imposing a slow pace on the army despite its capacity to move faster.
Jabbour, meanwhile, contends that Hezbollah’s weapons “are finished in Lebanon, whether in their regional function tied to Iran or as ‘resistance’ weapons.”
All of this makes the paradox clear: The state softens its vocabulary. The party hardens its tone. Between them stands a country suspended on a single word.
The article is a translation of the original Arabic.
