BEIRUT: Lebanon’s cabinet on Thursday held a second meeting within days to discuss the thorny task of disarming Hezbollah, a day after the Iran-backed group rejected the government’s decision to take away its weapons.
The more than four-hour meeting tackled a US proposal that includes a timetable for Hezbollah’s disarmament, with Washington pressing Lebanon to take action on the matter.
Information Minister Paul Morcos said the cabinet endorsed the introduction of the US text without discussing provisions relating to specific timelines. The government on Tuesday said disarmament should happen by the end of 2025.
The introduction endorsed in Thursday’s meeting lists 11 “objectives” including “ensuring the sustainability” of a November ceasefire agreement with Israel, and “the gradual end of the armed presence of all non-governmental entities, including Hezbollah, in all Lebanese territory.”
It also calls for the deployment of Lebanese army forces in the border areas and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the five points in Lebanon’s south the military has occupied since last year’s war with Hezbollah.
The November ceasefire that sought to end more than a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah stipulated that weapons in Lebanon be restricted to six official security and military agencies.
Following the cabinet decision on Tuesday, Morcos said the Lebanese government was waiting to review an “executive plan” on Hezbollah’s disarmament.
The army was tasked with presenting the plan to restrict the possession of weapons to government forces by the end of August.
Only then would the government review the full provisions of the US proposal, whose implementation “is dependent on the approval of each of the concerned countries,” the information minister said.
Four Shiite Muslim ministers, including three directly affiliated with Hezbollah or its ally the Amal movement, left Thursday’s session in protest of the government push to disarm the group, according to Hezbollah’s Al Manar television.
They also refused to discuss the proposal submitted by US envoy Tom Barrack, the report said.
Environment Minister Tamara Elzein, who is close to Amal, told Al Manar that the government “first hoped to consolidate the ceasefire and the Israeli withdrawal, before we could complete the remaining points” in Barrack’s proposal such as taking away Hezbollah’s weapons.
In a post on X, Barrack on Thursday hailed Lebanon’s “historic, bold, and correct decision this week to begin fully implementing” the November ceasefire.
Under the ceasefire agreement, Israel was to fully withdraw its troops from Lebanon but has kept them in five border points it deemed strategic.
Under Lebanon’s sect-based power-sharing system, the withdrawal of the Shiite ministers from the government meeting could serve the claim that decisions made in their absence lack consensual legitimacy.
Before last year’s war with Israel, Hezbollah had wielded great domestic power enough to impose its will on the political system or disrupt the government’s work.
But the Shiite group has emerged from the war weakened, reducing its political influence in Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc called on the government on Thursday to “correct the situation it has put itself and Lebanon in by slipping into accepting American demands that inevitably serve the interests of the Zionist enemy,” meaning Israel.
The group said on Wednesday that it would treat the government’s decision to disarm it “as if it did not exist,” accusing the cabinet of committing a “grave sin.”
Israel — which routinely carries out air strikes in Lebanon despite the November ceasefire — has already signalled it would not hesitate to launch destructive military operations if Beirut failed to disarm the group.
The Lebanese health ministry said Israel carried out several strikes on eastern Lebanon on Thursday, killing at least seven people.
Andrea Tenenti, spokesperson for UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, said on Thursday that troops “discovered a vast network of fortified tunnels” in the south.
UN spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters that peacekeepers and Lebanese troops found “three bunkers, artillery, rocket launchers, hundreds of explosive shells and rockets, anti-tank mines and about 250 ready-to-use improvised explosive devices.”
Prime Minister Salam said in June that the Lebanese army had dismantled more than 500 Hezbollah military positions and weapons depots in the south.
