The study employs a structured, focused historical comparison, evaluating each case across five dimensions: the scope and legal ambition of the arrangement, Lebanese state and Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) capacity, domestic legitimacy and armed pluralism, external influence and veto power, and verification and enforcement. Drawing on agreement texts, United Nations reporting, academic scholarship, and contemporary reporting, the analysis distinguishes between institutional resilience and effective state authority. Lebanon’s institutions have survived civil war, foreign intervention, political paralysis, economic collapse, and repeated cross-border escalation, but that endurance has not produced an uncontested capacity to determine questions of war, peace, or the use of armed force.

The 1983 agreement, negotiated after Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, aimed to end the state of war, facilitate Israeli withdrawal, establish security arrangements in southern Lebanon, and expand the role of Lebanese state institutions. Its central premise was that Israeli withdrawal and the extension of Lebanese state authority would proceed together. Yet the agreement collapsed within a year. The Lebanese government of President Amin Gemayel retained international recognition and formal constitutional authority, but the civil war had fragmented the country’s political and military order, and the LAF lacked the cohesion, operational reach, and political legitimacy needed to secure the south. The government formally abrogated the agreement on 5 March 1984.

Domestic opposition proved decisive. Druze, Shi’i, Palestinian, leftist, and pro-Syrian forces opposed the agreement for different ideological, strategic, and communal reasons, generating sufficient resistance to prevent the transformation of formal approval into a nationally sustainable security policy. Notably, the study finds that Hezbollah was not the principal cause of the agreement’s failure; in 1983 and 1984 the organization was still in an early formative stage. Shi’i mobilization emerged through a broader political field in which Amal, Islamist networks, local resistance groups, and Iranian-linked actors played distinct roles. The central problem was that the Lebanese government could neither secure consent from nor impose compliance upon the range of armed and political actors whose cooperation was necessary.

Syria exercised what the author terms external veto power: the capacity of an outside actor to block, delay, reshape, or raise the costs of implementing a security arrangement. Damascus opposed a separate Lebanon–Israel arrangement because it threatened Syrian regional influence and risked establishing an Arab–Israeli precedent that excluded Syria. Its leverage rested not on diplomatic objection alone but on a substantial military presence in Lebanon, alliances with Lebanese and Palestinian armed actors, and the agreement’s own linkage of Israeli withdrawal to the departure of other foreign forces, including Syrian troops. The agreement’s liaison and verification mechanisms, including a Joint Liaison Committee with United States participation, could document violations but could not compensate for the absence of a domestic and regional balance of power capable of sustaining the arrangement.

The post-2024 environment differs substantially. Resolution 1701, adopted after the 2006 war, called for the extension of Lebanese governmental authority throughout the country and an area between the Blue Line and the Litani River free of armed personnel and weapons other than those of the Government of Lebanon and UNIFIL. The November 2024 cessation-of-hostilities arrangement required that official Lebanese military and security forces be the only armed bodies deployed south of the Litani River, and mandated measures against unauthorized arms. The June 2026 Trilateral Framework went further, linking phased Israeli redeployment to the verified disarmament of non-state armed groups, the dismantlement of their military infrastructure, LAF deployment, and the progressive restoration of effective Lebanese sovereign authority, with pilot zones, a U.S.-supported military coordination mechanism, and assistance tied to verifiable benchmarks.

Institutional conditions are more favorable than in the early 1980s. The LAF is a more established national army, and it expanded its deployment in southern Lebanon under the cessation-of-hostilities arrangement, although United Nations reporting documented operational constraints, unauthorized armed activity, and an incomplete Israeli withdrawal. Political developments have also opened space for asserting state authority: the election of President Joseph Aoun, the government of Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, and the cabinet decision of 5 August 2025 tasking the LAF with preparing a plan to place weapons under state authority by the end of 2025. International assistance has grown as well; in June 2026 the European Union adopted a new 100 million euro European Peace Facility measure for the LAF, bringing total support since 2022 to 182 million euros.

Yet the study emphasizes that these advantages do not automatically create an uncontested state monopoly over force. Hezbollah’s military and political position was weakened by the 2024 war, including the killing of Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, but the organization retains its political constituency, organizational infrastructure, and capacity to resist changes to the existing distribution of coercive authority. Hezbollah publicly rejected a disarmament timetable, insisting that any discussion of its weapons be linked to Israeli withdrawal and an end to Israeli military action. In August 2026, Secretary-General Naim Qassem publicly rejected the Trilateral Framework and the direct negotiations from which it emerged. A May 2026 survey reported substantial sectarian differences in Lebanese public opinion on Hezbollah’s weapons and negotiations with Israel, though the publicly available reporting lacks full methodological detail.

External constraints have also changed shape rather than disappeared. The fall of the Assad regime in December 2024 disrupted a major overland supply route through which Iran had provided Hezbollah with weapons; Qassem acknowledged the loss of this route while maintaining that other means of support could be sought. The study characterizes Iran’s role as indirect external influence rather than a direct equivalent of Syria’s former military presence, stressing that Hezbollah remains an autonomous Lebanese actor whose decisions cannot be reduced to instructions from Tehran. Meanwhile, Israel’s continued military presence in five positions and two buffer zones north of the Blue Line, together with ongoing air and ground operations, shapes the political environment in which Lebanese state authority is expected to expand, potentially weakening the domestic legitimacy of LAF deployment.

The comparison yields a conditional conclusion. Contemporary arrangements benefit from more developed monitoring mechanisms, including a UNIFIL-hosted mechanism chaired by the United States with France, Israel, and Lebanon, under which UNIFIL identified unauthorized weapons on 150 occasions while the LAF removed 90 of 113 identified arms caches. But monitoring and assistance cannot independently solve the underlying political problem. The study concludes that framework agreements can reduce escalation, support official deployment, and facilitate negotiations without necessarily establishing exclusive state authority. Their viability depends on gradual, reciprocal, and verifiable implementation that expands state authority while linking Lebanese measures to credible Israeli restraint and phased redeployment. External sponsorship can support this process, the author argues, but cannot substitute for domestic legitimacy, effective coercive capacity, and sustained political backing. Lebanon, in this analysis, exemplifies resilience without effective sovereignty: institutions endure through accommodation and bargaining while coercive authority remains divided.

Subject of Research: Implementation gaps in Lebanon's security framework agreements from 1983 to 2026 under conditions of hybrid sovereignty

Article Title: Lebanon between framework agreements and proxy instability: post-war resilience in a hybrid state

Article References: Bartal, S. (2026). Lebanon between framework agreements and proxy instability: post-war resilience in a hybrid state. Frontiers in Political Science, 8, 1977432. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2026.1977432

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fpos.2026.1977432

Keywords: Lebanon, hybrid sovereignty, Hezbollah, Lebanese Armed Forces, Resolution 1701, security agreements, external veto power, Israel, Iran, Syria, peace implementation, Trilateral Framework