Mitchell Plitnick
Mondoweiss / January 10, 2025
Joseph Aoun’s election this week as Lebanon’s new president reflects a new push toward a unified Lebanon. As the ceasefire time frame between Israel and Hezbollah ends there are signs Lebanon will be more capable of resisting Israeli aggression.
On November 27, Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a provisional ceasefire that was intended to end Israel’s massive, bloody bombardment of Lebanon and Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, still suffering under the Israeli operation of genocide that started after October 7, 2023.
The agreement was that Israel would have 60 days to withdraw from Lebanon while Hezbollah would move its forces north, away from the border with Israel, during the same time. The Lebanese military and a United Nations peacekeeping force would replace Hezbollah and Israel in Southern Lebanon.
As the ceasefire period is close to coming to an end, Amos Hochstein, a key official in U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration who played a role in securing both the ceasefire and the side letter was back in Lebanon this week after meeting with leaders of Saudi Arabia in Riyadh.
Hochstein came away vowing that Israel would complete its withdrawal by the deadline, but with that deadline falling just after Donald Trump takes over in the White House, it’s anyone’s guess as to whether Israel will comply and whether the United States will insist that it does so. While Trump has insisted that he wants fighting to end in both Lebanon and Gaza by the time he takes over, the prospect of his team renegotiating what would be presented as a failed Biden ceasefire could be tempting.
Hochstein and his Saudi interlocutors also took a great interest in the presidential elections that began this week in Lebanon. On Thursday, Joseph Aoun was elected president.
Aoun, a Maronite Christian, has been primed for this race for several years. He is widely viewed as someone who can reach across religious and cultural lines in Lebanon, and he recently got an endorsement from Walid Jumblatt, a prominent leader of the Lebanese Druze community. Hezbollah, while stopping short of endorsing him, said they “do not veto” his candidacy. This statement became more important when the candidate Hezbollah supported, Suleiman Frangieh, dropped out of the race.
Aoun’s election also opens the potential for the Lebanese government—including but no longer deferring to Hezbollah—to supplant Hezbollah in leading both physical and political defense against Israel.
There are many questions about Lebanon’s immediate and long-term future. But there seems to be renewed energy, in Hezbollah and in the government more broadly, to adjust the country’s course and chart a future that is more stable and more capable of standing up to the outside interference that has been a part of Lebanon’s existence for so many years.
State of the ceasefire
Since the ceasefire began, Israel has launched over 800 attacks by land and air, according to the complaint filed at the UN Security Council by Lebanon. Israel’s response is that these have been aimed at Hezbollah weapons that they were attempting to move or to use against Israel, although, without proof of an imminent attack (which is unlikely to have been real), this is clearly no excuse for Israel’s actions.
Still, both the Israeli and Lebanese perspectives can be correct, in a sense. Lebanon is proceeding under the terms of the ceasefire agreement they signed and implemented. Israel, on the other hand, is moving forward on the basis of both that agreement and the so-called “side letter” the United States and Israel agreed to without Lebanese consent.
That side letter essentially gave Israel the right to continue its “self-defense” operations in Lebanon under the terms of the ceasefire. As we know all too well, the United States and Israel have a definition of “self-defense” that is broad enough to include any offensive action Israel chooses to take.
Lebanon, though not agreeing to the side letter, was certainly aware of it when they signed on to the ceasefire, but what choice did they have? Israel was pounding the defenseless country, slaughtering civilians and devastating a state that was already suffering immensely under a collapsed economy and a non-functional government.
Even so, Lebanon must have believed that the United States would try to restrain Israel at least to a degree, given how important this ceasefire (unlike one in Gaza) seemed to be for them. But that has not been the case.
Instead, Israel has taken advantage of the side letter, and the desperate situation Lebanon and Hezbollah find themselves in to continue to hit sites in Lebanon, albeit at a considerably slower and less devastating rate than it had done for some two months before the ceasefire was reached.
Hezbollah, for its part, is trying to regroup and to avoid giving Israel an excuse to resume its all-out assault. In early December, it did launch some mortars toward Israeli positions in the disputed Shebaa Farms area in an attempt to respond to Israel’s ongoing actions, but for the most part, its response has been limited to slowing, but not stopping, its compliance with the agreement to withdraw northward.
It’s worth noting that Israel, the United States, and most mainstream media prominently identified Hezbollah’s few mortars as a serious violation of the ceasefire, but considered Israel’s overwhelming response to that incident and its ongoing attacks before and after it as mere ”self-defense.” Double standards remain firmly in place.
Regional reverberations as Hezbollah regroups
Aoun has widespread support outside of Lebanon. He is seen favourably by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and France. That support was certainly important to his election, as all of those countries have varying degrees of influence in the Lebanese parliament, which is the body that elects the president.
Aoun was a key figure in negotiating the ceasefire with Israel and has the unusual status of being someone the Israelis feel they can work with and someone who has broad, though far from total, support among the various Lebanese factions.
Lebanon has been without a president since Michel Aoun’s (no relation to the new president) term ended in 2022 and has tried a dozen times to elect a new one, but no one has been able to gather the two-thirds support in Parliament needed to be declared the winner, resulting in political paralysis.
The election is crucial for Lebanon to begin to rebuild its government and face the issues it has internally—a shattered economy, continuing social fracturing, and extensive governmental corruption, all of which are deeply intertwined—and externally. With Hezbollah substantially weakened, it is crucial that a reconstructed Lebanese government assert itself as the central power, and, in time, the defender of the country. Aoun seemed to send a message that such was his intent, stating in his first speech, “My mandate will emphasize the state’s right to monopolize arms.” This is clearly aimed at Hezbollah. If Aoun is serious about healing rifts in Lebanon, he will work to integrate Hezbollah fully into all levels of the Lebanese military and political system going forward.
With Iran weakened and more isolated from Lebanon, particularly in the wake of the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, it is more imperative than ever that a central Lebanese government assert itself in the region and in the face of an ongoing threat from Israel. There are also clear advantages for Hezbollah in that idea, given its devastating setbacks in the past few months.
The focus inward for Lebanon is very much reflected in some of the discussions that have been reported to be taking place among the Hezbollah leadership.
Hezbollah isn’t only reeling from the damage Israel did to its own fighting forces and weaponry. Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and its clear military superiority to Iran, combined with the fall of Bashar al-Assad, have splintered the very concept of an alliance to oppose Israeli aggression and war crimes. While Ansarallah in Yemen (the Houthis) continue to lob missiles at Israel (and continue to absorb pounding attacks from Israel, the United States, and their allies), the attempt to support Gaza by opening several fronts against Israel failed badly and exposed the imbalance of power between Israel and the “Axis of Resistance.”
Each party is now forced to regroup and consider the strategy it needs to pursue for itself. Iran is confronted with the question of how to avoid what seems like the increasing danger of an Israeli attack backed by the incoming Trump administration. There is a significant debate going in the Islamic Republic over how to engage Trump. And that is all happening in light of serious internal issues, particularly a struggling economy.
For Hezbollah, they are forced to consider how to proceed in a world where their ally in Syria is gone, and their ally in Tehran is weakened, threatened, and physically separated from Lebanon in a way it had not been before. Internal discussions seem to be steering Hezbollah toward strengthening its Lebanese identity and playing down, though not abandoning, its global role.
This ties into Hezbollah’s strengths in confronting Israel. Whether or not Hezbollah eventually merges with the Lebanese military, it has demonstrated both its strengths and its weaknesses regarding Israel.
Hezbollah might have missiles with which to threaten Israel, but ultimately, it cannot compete with Israel in the air. On the ground, it is a different story. Israel was able to devastate Lebanon with air strikes and brazen destruction once it had forced the evacuation of Lebanese villages. But Hezbollah forces were repeatedly successful in repelling Israeli ground offensives.
Thus, in both military and political terms, Hezbollah’s strength is on the ground in Lebanon.
If Aoun can finally heal the deep rifts that still scar the country after years of civil war, sectarian and political divisions, and calamities both from outside and inside the country, Hezbollah could become a key political player that could push the country, and the region, into what is most needed in the face of Israeli and American aggression and genocide: a unified stance for regional independence and self-reliance.
While that may not be entirely popular among U.S.-supported dictatorships from Egypt to the UAE, the self-interested positions and fickle dispositions of Donald Trump and a substantial number of his followers are likely to encourage even Saudi and Emirati leaders to seek multiple options rather than rely solely on American support. This has been motivating Saudi Arabia for years, as its détente with Iran and hesitant but active flirting with the BRICS alliance demonstrates.
A unified Lebanon might find more support for resisting Israeli aggression and advocating for Palestine than it ever has before, despite Israel’s assertion of its undeniable military power.
Mitchell Plitnick is the president of ReThinking Foreign Policy; he is the co-author, with Marc Lamont Hill, of Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics
