Lebanon and Israel have signed a United States-brokered framework agreement that ties a phased Israeli military withdrawal from southern Lebanon to the verified disarmament of Hezbollah, a deal that drew immediate rejection from the armed group and sent protesters into the streets of Beirut. The 14-point accord, finalized in Washington after months of indirect negotiation, is the most detailed attempt yet to translate last year's fragile ceasefire into a durable settlement.
The agreement states that Israel has no claim to Lebanese territory and that the Lebanese Armed Forces will ultimately be the sole authority in the south, but it makes that transfer of control conditional. The text describes a 'sequenced process' in which the Lebanese army restores 'effective sovereign authority over all Lebanese territory, pending the verified disarmament of non-state armed groups' — only after which Israel would 'progressively redeploy' out of the areas it still occupies.
Israeli officials made clear they intend to hold the line on that sequencing. Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel would carry out no further withdrawals from Lebanese territory until Hezbollah is disarmed, framing the group's weapons as the central obstacle to any Israeli pullback. The arrangement leaves Israeli forces in place at several points inside Lebanon for the foreseeable future.
Hezbollah's response was unequivocal. The group's secretary-general, Naim Qassem, declared the agreement 'null and void,' calling it 'humiliating, shameful, and a surrender of sovereignty.' A senior Hezbollah official, Hassan Fadlallah, warned that attempting to force disarmament could push Lebanon toward civil war, saying the group would not surrender its arms and would resist any move by the Lebanese army to seize them.
The rejection spilled into the streets. After the agreement was announced, demonstrators rallied in the Lebanese capital, many waving the yellow flags of the Iran-backed movement, to denounce a deal they cast as imposed on Lebanon under duress. The protests underscored the political risk facing Lebanon's government, which signed the framework even as a substantial bloc of the population views Hezbollah as a legitimate resistance force rather than a militia to be dismantled.
Analysts described the deal's central mechanism as both its innovation and its weakness. By conditioning the Israeli withdrawal on disarmament that only the Lebanese state can certify — and that Hezbollah has vowed to obstruct — the framework creates a chicken-and-egg dynamic that has repeatedly stalled past efforts. The Lebanese army, chronically under-resourced, has neither the capacity nor, many believe, the political mandate to confront Hezbollah directly.
For the United States, which has invested heavily in brokering the talks, the framework represents a diplomatic milestone even if its implementation remains uncertain. The accord builds on the ceasefire that paused the most intense fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, and it commits both governments to a path that, on paper, ends with full Lebanese sovereignty and an Israeli departure. Translating that text into reality, however, will test whether Beirut can do what no Lebanese government has managed in decades: bring the country's most powerful armed faction under state control.