It’s not just the process of disarming Hezbollah that is proving harder for Lebanon than anticipated.
Last year, before that fraught effort was initiated as part of negotiations to end the U.S. war against Iran and its proxies, Palestinian groups in Lebanon started handing over their weapons under an agreed process that seemed to be working. Trucks left Palestinian refugee camps loaded with weapons, and the Lebanese Defense Forces took possession of them one after another. Official statements and photographs suggested that an issue that had long been beyond the Lebanese state authority to resolve was headed toward resolution.
But more than a year after Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced in May 2025 that “the era of weapons outside the authority of the Lebanese state is over,” the picture has changed. The trucks have disappeared and the process has faded from view, with no official word on its status.
The camps were granted special security status in the 1969 Cairo Agreement, which transferred control of the refugee facilities from the Lebanese armed forces to the “Leadership of the Palestinian Armed Struggle.”
Lebanon’s Parliament annulled that agreement in 1987, but its repercussions remained evident in relations between the state and the camps, as well as in the reality of Palestinian weapons inside them.
Lebanon has 12 official Palestinian refugee camps and a number of informal ones, the most prominent of which are Ain al-Hilweh and Rashidieh in the south; Shatila and Burj al-Barajneh in Beirut; and Beddawi and Nahr al-Bared in the north. UNRWA records show about 493,000 registered Palestinian refugees in the camps.
Last September, the Lebanese army said it had received five truckloads of weapons and ammunication from the Ain al-Hilweh camp in Sidon and three from the Beddawi camp in Tripoli. At the time, the process appeared to be advancing from one camp to another.
But the limits of the process were becoming plain. The weapons first handed over to the state were mostly held by factions affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organization, while arsenals belonging to factions outside the PLO — foremost among them Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which are designated as terrorist organizations by the United States — remained outside the handover process.
Differing Accounts
Hisham Dabsi, an adviser to the Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee, told MBN that the process has neither been completed nor halted and that the Palestinian initiative remains ongoing.
He said the Fatah al-Intifada organization handed over its weapons at the Beddawi camp to the Lebanese army about two weeks ago, without objection.
A senior Palestinian official familiar with the issue told MBN that all the heavy weapons requested by the Lebanese state had been handed over, both inside and outside the camps.
The official said the Lebanese army had taken control of the camps belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command in Naameh, Qousaya and Anjar, as well as the camps belonging to Fatah al-Intifada.
“There are no longer any heavy weapons,” the official said, adding that what remains is primarily light weaponry “that no longer has any significant military value.”
A Lebanese security source offered a more cautious assessment of what has been accomplished. “The quantities handed over are very limited,” the person told MBN, adding that the camps still contain more weapons than those revealed during the handover operations.
The discrepancy between the two accounts remains difficult to resolve in the absence of an official inventory of the arsenals before the process began, how much was handed over and how much remains.
The main sticking point involves factions outside the PLO, foremost among them Hamas, because the Palestinian Authority lacks the authority to compel them to surrender their weapons.
Dabsi said Hamas is maneuvering to secure special concessions from the Lebanese state, including recognition that its presence is legitimate. The government and presidency, however, he said, remain committed to the principles set out in the president’s inaugural address and the Cabinet’s policy statement, which limit official relations to the Palestinian leadership and the Palestinian Embassy in Beirut.
Palestinian factions announced that the handover operations since August 2025 were specific to Fatah and not the beginning of a comprehensive disarmament process. They said they would not give up their weapons as long as “the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories continues.”
Dabsi of the Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee said any faction that refuses to implement Lebanese state decisions or those of the Palestinian leadership will be dealt with by the relevant Lebanese authorities, not by the PLO.
He stressed that no one has the right to bypass the authority of the Lebanese state and its armed forces, which have exclusive jurisdiction over the issue of illegal weapons and can address it in whatever manner and at whatever time they deem appropriate.
The process, in any case, has entered a new phase: What could be accomplished through an understanding with the Palestinian Authority has already been achieved. What remains involves factions over which Ramallah has no authority, shifting responsibility the Lebanese state itself.
A Delicate Equation
The uneven process of disarming the camps has yielded a new security risk, observers say.
Disarming Fatah and PLO factions while Hamas and Islamic Jihad retain their weapons upsets the balance of power, particularly in Ain al-Hilweh, where the areas of influence of different groups overlap.
That could expand the influence of factions that retain their weapons at the expense of those that have surrendered theirs, redrawing the balance of power inside the camps rather than ending armed groups.
There is also a Lebanese factor behind the slowdown, the Lebanese security source said, linking the process to the broader issue of placing all weapons under state control.
Completing the disarmament of Palestinian factions would put Hezbollah’s weapons more squarely at the center of the debate, the person said.
The Lebanese state has put the issues of Palestinian weapons and those of Hezbollah, designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, under a single political heading: getting weapons exclusively into the hands of legitimate state institutions.
The absence of images of trucks loaded with weapons does not necessarily mean the process has ended. But it does reveal that its nature has changed. Political coordination within the Palestinian factions has reached its limits. Now in the case of the Palestinian weapons as well as those of Hezbollah, the onus is increasingly on the Lebanese state itself.
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
