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Source: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-893495
Hizbullah Remains Central Barrier in Israel-Lebanon Negotiations
(Jerusalem Post) Aviram Bellaishe - In the direct Israeli-Lebanese talks held in Washington, Lebanon cannot adopt a language that frames these talks as a partnership with Israel against Hizbullah without destroying its domestic legitimacy. Hizbullah is simultaneously a Lebanese sovereignty problem and an Israeli security threat. There is a certain overlap of interests between Beirut and Jerusalem on the need to prevent Hizbullah from exercising independent military control over southern Lebanon. However, that does not put the two sides on the same side. Peace with Lebanon is an important goal. Normalization between the two countries would be a genuine regional achievement. Still, none of this is achievable as long as Hizbullah continues to exist as an armed terrorist organization with its own escalation decisions and a position that fundamentally negates Lebanon's monopoly on force. Peace cannot exist with one government when another actor inside the country holds the right to decide on war and peace. This is why the goal must be reframed. The objective is the systematic, gradual denial of the sovereign functions Hizbullah currently exercises from Lebanese soil. The first is the right to decide on war and peace, independent of the Lebanese state. The second is physical control over southern Lebanon and the border zone. The third is dominance over financial flows, supply chains, and smuggling networks. The fourth is the capacity to substitute for the state itself through reconstruction, welfare, services, and political representation within the Shia community. Only the gradual removal of these four functions can return southern Lebanon, and the authority over it, to the Lebanese state. The more effectively southern Lebanon is brought under the authority of the Lebanese state, the less need there is for Israel to act on its own. What is required is not a redeployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces, but a dedicated Lebanese force for the south: recruited from outside the south's local population and outside the infrastructure Hizbullah has built there, and tasked with holding ground, controlling the border, and preventing Hizbullah's return. This Lebanese state force is required in order to make Lebanese sovereignty real in practice. Hizbullah's supply routes must be permanently degraded, not temporarily disrupted. No security arrangement survives if the population remains exclusively reliant on Hizbullah for the basics of normal life. A state-led reconstruction mechanism, backed internationally, is a strategic necessity. Success is not a signed document. Success is a verifiable situation, within a few years, in which Hizbullah no longer functions as an operational sovereign south of the Litani; southern Lebanon has genuinely transferred to state authority; Hizbullah's financial and logistical networks are measurably degraded; and the Shia community has real alternatives to dependence on a single armed organization. That is also the condition for peace. The writer, vice president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, served in senior government positions for 27 years.