The intensification of Israel’s aggression on Lebanon has prompted a surge in nationwide support for the resistance movement, transcending Hezbollah’s traditional base. This widespread backing underscores a collective acknowledgment of the need to resist a relentless colonial adversary. For 76 years, Lebanon has suffered countless atrocities and massacres at the hands of the Israeli armed forces. The Lebanese populace has also witnessed the genocidal war in Gaza, compounded by the complicity of the so-called “international community.” Aware of the Israeli tactic of exploiting sectarian and national divisions, many Lebanese have united, setting aside internal disputes to face this existential challenge.

Despite this unity, a vocal minority in Lebanon—backed by extensive media influence and resources—persists in promoting an anti-resistance agenda. Aligned with liberal and right-wing ideologies, this faction advocates for the disarmament of Hezbollah and other resistance groups, claiming that the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) alone should defend the country’s sovereignty. This stated support for the LAF has culminated in the appointment of US-backe d LAF commander Joseph Aoun, as president of the republic, in a violation of the Lebanese constitution. A US-backed candidate, Nawaf Salam, has also been nominated as Prime Minister, at a time during which the United States is in the process of building the second largest embassy complex of the world in Awkar, in Beirut's outskirts. All the while, major media outlets keep alluding to a supposed ‘Iranian occupation’ of Lebanon. This article seeks to dismantle this narrative and expose the inherent limitations of the LAF in countering the threat Zionism presents.

A Historical Perspective

Paradoxically, the foremost promoters of this narrative in Lebanon are the fascist parties allied to the gulf monarchies and the Western powers, such as the Kataeb (also known as the phalangist party) and the Lebanese Forces Party, a breakaway Kataeb. However, the narrative that has historically been disseminated by the fascists is one represented by the slogan ‘Lebanon’s strength lies in its weakness’. Indeed, those who are currently calling for the armament of the LAF are the ones who have historically blocked all attempts to supply it with heavy weapons since the eruption of the Lebanese civil war in 1975.

The Role of the Lebanese Armed Forces

Since its founding, the Lebanese army’s primary role has been maintaining internal order, often at the expense of suppressing popular movements. Between the 1950s and 1970s—a period marked by significant trade union activism—the LAF systematically repressed workers’ strikes and protests. Additionally, the army controlled Palestinian refugee camps through the Second Bureau, a notorious military intelligence branch known for its brutality toward camp residents. This oppressive control persisted until the 1969 Cairo Agreement, which granted Palestinian resistance groups operational autonomy within Lebanon.

Prior to the Cairo Agreement, the LAF would target Palestinian fighters opposing the Zionist entity from Lebanese soil, arresting many, and even imposing a three-day siege on the town of Bint Jbeil, when its residents refused to surrender the fighter who were sheltering there. Despite these actions, the army failed to prevent numerous Zionist aggressions. Historian Mahmoud Sweid recorded 140 such attacks between the 1949 armistice and 1964, prior to the emergence of armed Palestinian resistance factions.

Right-Wing Obstruction

Lebanon’s right-wing leaders consistently opposed equipping the LAF with weapons capable of countering Zionist aggression, citing a misguided belief in Lebanon’s “neutrality” and aiming to sever ties with Palestine. Ironically, these leaders often undermined Lebanon’s sovereignty by inviting foreign military interventions to secure their own interests. For example, former President Camille Chamoun requested U.S. military support in 1958 to suppress domestic opposition, resulting in American troops deploying in Beirut. During the civil war, right-wing factions further compromised sovereignty by facilitating Syrian army intervention and later collaborating with Israel, culminating in the Zionist invasions of 1978 and 1982. During the second occupation, Israel appointed Israeli puppet Bachir Gemayel as president of Lebanon after a show election in the Lebanese parliament.

The Divided Military

The Lebanese Civil War highlighted the LAF’s vulnerabilities, as numerous soldiers defected to join militias, including the South Lebanon Army (SLA)—a Zionist proxy. The SLA was founded by two officers who defected from the LAF: Saad Haddad, who had close ties with Camille Chamoun and the National Liberal Party’s “Tigers” militia, and Samy al Chidiac, who was the Kataeb’s representative in Southern Lebanon. During the 1982 occupation, the SLA enforced Zionist policies in southern Lebanon, conscripted locals, and operated notorious prisons and torture centers, such as the Khiam detention center.

The Emergence of Resistance

All these factors forced the people of the south to self-organize to confront the occupier. An organic popular resistance was formed, consisting of several factions, including the Lebanese Communist Party, along with other leftist and Arab nationalist organizations under the framework of the “Lebanese National Resistance Front” (Jammoul). This front would later be reinforced by Hezbollah after their founding in 1982.

What prompted the IDF to withdraw from Beirut in 1982, was a series of operations carried out by resistance fighters from a coalition of leftist and nationalist forces,  which, for the Zionists, made the cost of occupying Beirut very high in terms of casualties. 

Frantz Fanon said:

   “colonialism only loosens its hold when the knife is at its throat.”

 This was proven by the Zionist enemy, which knows no language other than that of brute force. International agreements and laws are of no use when dealing with the Zionists, as evidenced in 1982 after the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) agreed to withdraw from Lebanon in return for a written agreement with the US ensuring that no Palestinian ‘civilian’ refugees will be harmed. This, however, did not prevent the Zionist occupation forces from committing the Sabra and Shatila massacre through its partners in the country, the Lebanese Forces.

In 2000, after 18 years of struggle, the resistance in Lebanon, now led by Hezbollah, succeeded in liberating the south from the Zionist occupation. All Lebanese territory was liberated except for the Shebaa Farms and the Kafr Shuba Hills, which had been occupied during the 1967 war, as well as the seven villages that had been occupied during the Nakba in 1948: Tarbikha, Saliha, Malkieh, Nabi Yusha, Qadas, Hunin and Abil al Qamh. By liberating the south from the occupation, Hezbollah legitimized its presence and armament in Lebanon as the country’s foremost protector against the Zionists. Most right-wing political groups in Lebanon have since made the disarmament of Hezbollah a central cause.

Debunking the 'Switzerland of the Middle East’ Myth

As mentioned before, Zionist attacks did not begin after the resistance factions started operating from Lebanese territory, as some claim. Israel committed several massacres in Lebanese villages during the 1948 Nakba. Perhaps the most infamous of these was the Houla village massacre, in which the newly-established IDF killed at least 91 Lebanese villagers.

Even today, right-wing mouthpieces in Lebanon try to blame the Lebanese resistance and armed Palestinian factions for Zionist attacks and wars on the country, claiming that the Zionists would have no business intervening militarily in Lebanon if not for the presence of armed resistance. This narrative is ahistorical and inaccurate, as there had already been hundreds of Zionist attacks on Lebanon even prior to the arrival of Palestinian resistance factions, and prior to the creation of the first Lebanese armed resistance cells. These cells were established specifically to counter the enemy's attacks. This view is accompanied by a romanticized nationalist discourse that invokes the pre-civil war Lebanon, which was then known as the “Switzerland of the Middle East” due to the country's economic prosperity at the time. What these propagandists fail to mention, however, is that the civil war was not started by Palestinian militants, but by the phalangists and their supporters who waged a purge war against the Palestinians and their allies.,The phalangists started with the targeting of a bus, whose passengers were all unarmed civilians, in 1975. When they found themselves losing the war, the fascists - who call themselves 'sovereigntists' today - engaged two foreign armies to fight in Lebanon, one of which hailing from an entity legally classified as an enemy of the Lebanese state (the IDF).

Furthermore, Lebanon's nickname “Switzerland of the Middle East” is inaccurate. Most of the Lebanese people lived in abject poverty, as the richest 4% of Lebanese monopolized 33% of the country's national income. Close ties between political leaders and big capitalists allowed them to receive numerous privileges from the state. The Lebanese economy, from that period until today, has been an unproductive rentier economy. The Lebanese economic model was theorized by a handful of bourgeois intellectuals themselves produced by French colonialism to serve its agenda. 

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The main theorist of this economic model was Michel Chiha, a wealthy banker who  was also  influential in the drafting of Lebanon’s first constitution. Under this economic model, the industrial and agricultural sectors are weakened and dominated by the service sector and financial capital, leading to the accumulation of the country's wealth in the hands of a few super-rich individuals. The main reason that made Lebanon a prominent commercial hub in the region was the Arab countries' boycott of the Zionist entity, and their consequent boycott of the ports of occupied Palestine, replacing them with Lebanese ports. This turned Lebanon into the world's gateway to the Arab countries. In other words, the Lebanese bourgeoisie indirectly benefited from the Palestinian Nakba, and it was in its interest to keep the situation as it was between 1948 and 1975. 

This is not to mention that Lebanon’s predatory capitalist system placed Palestinian refugees at the bottom of the social pyramid, as they were excluded from the country’s labor law , and were therefore barred from many professions, with most of them being exploited as low-wage workers.

For their part, southerners were another victim of Lebanon's capitalist system. The dominant mode of production in the south was agriculture, while the agricultural sector mwas the most marginalized economic sector in the country. Many southerners engaged in trade union work, only to be systematically oppressed by the same state apparatus that stands helpless in the face of Zionist aggression against the south.

‍The Reality of “Qualitative Military Edge”

‍"Specifically in the US, the solidarity movement with the Palestinian struggle is largely conditional on the continued existence of the Zionist Entity. Whoever among the Americans supports our cause and is completely hostile to the Zionist Entity, is necessarily hostile to the very idea of the United States. The entity is almost an exact carbon copy of the US, except that the Zionist project has been fully aware of its settler nature from inception.

“It is impossible to win an American to our camp without them being hostile to the very idea of the United States as a country. It is imperative then 

that we do not waste our time on trying to appeal to the emotions of the Americans and beg for their tears for your wounded. It is rather more important for you to dismantle the very idea of the United States from their heads as an assured entry point to ensure the deep understanding of our cause and our rights, as all other efforts will be futile."

~Martyr Bassel al Araj

There is no doubt that the United States is Israel’s strongest and most loyal partner, due to the latter’s role as an outpost of Western imperialism in the Middle East. The extent of the US’ 's attachment to Israel was especially evident after the start of the genocide in Gaza, as the Americans continued to support the Zionists unconditionally, both militarily and politically. The United States is by far the largest supplier of weapons and military equipment to Israel, even compared to many European countries such as Germany or the UK, which also support the IDF with weapons. This has been the case since the 1967 Naksa War, when the Americans surpassed the French to become the main supplier of weapons to the Zionists. The occupation annually receives $3.8 billion in financial aid from the Americans, including $3.3 billion in grants for the purchase of American weapons and feeding the US war machine. It also receives $500 million for research, development, production and maintenance of air defense systems such as the Iron Dome and David's Sling. All this occurs within the framework of a memorandum of understanding between the two countries, which is force from 2019 to 2028, in addition to other amounts allocated by the US administration to the IDF since the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa flood to support Israel’s genocide on Gaza, and their attacks on countries in the region. Estimates of the value of the military aid that the US has sent to Israel from October 7 2023 to November 2024 range between $12.5 billion and $17.9 billion.

This relationship maintains what is known as the “qualitative military edge,” a principle that the US has committed to since the late 1960s, until it became law in 2008, and can be summarized in four main points:

1. U.S. arms sales policy will ensure that Israel will be the first to benefit from the latest and most advanced U.S. military technology in the region.
2. If both Israel and an Arab country use the same U.S. military system, then Israel  will receive a more advanced version of the system or will have the option to  receive a customized version of said system.
3. If Israel objects to the sale of a military platform to an Arab army, the U.S. Congress can impose restrictions and conditions on the use and transfer of that device before or after the deal is finalized.
4. Whenever the US does sell advanced military systems to another army in the Middle East, Israel will usually receive compensation in the form of arms packages or military support. 

In short, this memorandum aims to ensure the military superiority of the IDF over other armies in the region. It has been amended several times, most recently in 2014, when a clause was added stating that the sale of a weapon to an Arab army must be preceded by an assessment of the impact on the balance of power in the region and the ability of the entity to face any threat from this army, in addition to a previous clause requiring a review of whether the sale of a weapon to any Middle Eastern country except the Zionist entity may lead to a threat to Zionist qualitative military superiority; if the answer is positive, the deal will not go through.

It is important to note that this applies to all countries in the region without exception, including Washington’s allies. For example, the deal to purchase F-35 fighter jets that the United Arab Emirates concluded in 2020 with the United States of America, but the Biden administration refused to pass the deal and send the fighters to the UAE despite the normalization of relations between them and the entity and the rapprochement between the two after normalization. The IDF thus remains the only army in the Middle East that possesses F-35 fighter jets in its arsenal.Right-wingers in Lebanon blame the resistance and its weapons and the US sanctions imposed on it for poorly arming the LAF. However, the US, who are the LAF's main weapons suppliers, will not allow the army to be equipped with weapons that would enable it to pose any threat on the IDF, which itself poses an existential threat on Lebanon. This is not limited to U.S. weapons. In 2008, the Americans exerted pressure that led to the thwarting of a Lebanese Russian deal that would have allowed the LAF to receive 10 MiG-29 fighter jets.The IDF will remain the best-armed and the strongest army in the region, especially thanks to the unconditional material and military support of the United States and several other Western countries. This means that the only method available to the Lebanese and Palestinians to confront the Zionist occupation is through asymmetrical guerrilla warfare, which is the strategy followed by other resistance factions in their battle with the occupier. If the occupying army is facing another regular army with fixed and known points and positions, it can, thanks to its air superiority, bomb these sites without any deterrent and defeat any army that does not have effective air defense systems, similar to 1967 when the enemy launched a lightning, unprovoked war on four Arab armies and managed to defeat them in just six days. The popular resistance in its current form is characterized by its organic connection to the land from which the fedayeen fight, as well as their knowledge of the field and their ground superiority that allows them to withstand an enemy that is militarily superior by conventional standards.‍

Conclusion

‍The Zionist entity continues to pose an existential threat to Lebanon, exemplified by decades of aggression and expansionism. The resistance, led by Hezbollah, remains indispensable in countering this menace, as Israeli forces persist in violating ceasefire agreements and committing atrocities. At least 472 ceasefire violations by the IDF have been recorded thus far, even amidst limited LAF deployment on Lebanon’s southern border, further proving the claim of the army's inability to counter these aggressions. All this while US tries to exert unilateral political pressure on the Lebanese side, while dismissing all the IDF's violations of the 1701 UNSC resolution that they claim to uphold. Once again, international accords and UN resolutions are proving their unreliability in deterring the Zionist expanding entity. The Lebanese people must sustain their unwavering support for the resistance, as Lebanon’s sovereignty cannot be achieved through disarmament or reliance on external actors but through unity, resilience, and steadfast opposition to oppression.