A country invaded, bombed and a regular army absent. The Israeli army entered southern Lebanon on Monday and is carrying out “localized ground raids,” she explains. It thus continues its ambition to destroy the infrastructure and military capabilities of Hezbollah, whose leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed on Friday in an Israeli bombing. And if “violent ground fighting” pits the IDF against Hezbollah soldiers, the regular Lebanese army does not participate at all in the clashes, despite the violation of the territorial integrity of its country. And “legally Israel and Lebanon are still in a state of war,” recalls Jean-Paul Chagnollaud, director of the Institute for Mediterranean Middle East Research and Studies.
“The Lebanese army has deployed in Beirut. I was there in May and the only soldiers I saw were hanging around in the “I love Beirut” district, this old, completely renovated center, and at the airport. The road to the airport was bombed, but it is not the Lebanese soldiers who are going to avoid that, and in any case the soldiers obviously have orders absolutely not to intervene,” continues Sébastien Boussois. , researcher at the Free University of Brussels.
“An army without equipment and on a drip”
What remains of the Lebanese government, which has resigned and without a president since 2022, has announced it will reposition its troops in the south of the country, but is absolutely unable to oppose Israeli troops. “The Lebanese army has a few thousand men [60.000 officiellement]without equipment and on a drip of international aid to pay their balance. It is structurally weak, like the country,” summarizes Jean-Paul Chagnollaud.
In southern Lebanon, it established itself on a few border posts, without opposing the entry of Israeli soldiers. It also cooperates with the forces of UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon), with 10,000 soldiers, including 700 French, who have a simple observer mandate and are supposed to ensure the application of resolution 1.701 of the Security Council. United Nations Security Council, which dates from 2006, and which provides for the demilitarization of a 30 km strip between the Israeli border and southern Lebanon.
But clearly, this resolution is a failure. Hezbollah is well established there and regularly fires rockets into northern Israel, forcing the Jewish state to evacuate 60,000 inhabitants of the north of its country, thereby justifying its military intervention.
Should Hezbollah be normalized?
A situation which ultimately could satisfy some of the Lebanese leaders, which would also explain the inaction of its army. “If the dirty work can be done by Israel without it costing Lebanon a penny, they are not against it,” says Sébastien Boussois. He continues: “There is, I think, a unique opportunity for the Lebanese who, if they cannot get rid of Hezbollah, have no other choice but to normalize it and integrate it, into the State and into the regular army, as was done in the Balkans or even at the creation of the State of Israel when its militias were integrated into the army. »
A perspective, which would require strong coordination from the international community, which Professor Jean-Paul Chagnaullaud does not envisage: “Israel has every interest in maintaining chaos, which it believes is a guarantee of security, rather than seeing a neighboring state enemy is structuring itself, and it is doing so with the complicity of the United States. »
“A territory in which powers coexist”
In this chaos therefore, the only forces capable of opposing Israel remain those of Hezbollah, supported by Iran which launched around a hundred missiles on Israel on Tuesday evening, without much damage. Under these conditions, from an absent state, from an army without capacity, can we finally consider Hezbollah as the regular Lebanese army? This would be to forget that Lebanon, although the Shiite organization is the leading political force in the country, is based on a tripartite confessional system with Sunnis and Christians, very far apart ideologically.
“Lebanon is characterized by its absence of state. It is more of a territory in which powers coexist and where a foreign army comes to impose its law,” summarizes Jean-Paul Chagnaullaud. Presented in this way, the regular Lebanese army is therefore only one component of these powers present in this territory, and it is by far the least powerful. “It is the army of a state which is not one,” concludes Sébastien Boussois.