Jacob Stoil
©2026 Jacob Stoil
Odysseus faced a choice: on one side, the monster Scylla, on the other, the whirlpool of Charybdis. Steering toward Scylla would mean losses among his crew, while navigating too close to Charybdis would doom his ship. Odysseus’s dilemma is all too familiar to policymakers in Lebanon and Israel as they seek a more peaceful and stable future for their two countries.
Israel and Lebanon are tired of war. While recent polls indicate a slight majority of Lebanese currently oppose normalization with Israel, a significant majority support disarming Hezbollah and ending the wars that Hezbollah brings. The Lebanese president and some senior military leaders have indicated the importance they place on disarming Hezbollah. On the other side of the fence, neither the Israeli populace nor the Israeli government has shown a serious desire to return to a long-term reoccupation of Lebanon. Despite the hopes of many on both sides of the blue line, however, a lasting ceasefire that could someday lead to peace remains elusive. To achieve a lasting solution, Lebanon will have to break through the threefold paradox that continues to drag it into repeated rounds of war and, together with Israel, chart a course that, while not without risk and cost, can see it safely to a better future.
In search of that peace, Israel and Lebanon have taken the first steps to establish a more lasting peace by signing a trilateral agreement with the United States and creating two pilot zones where Israel will withdraw in favor of the Lebanese army. While this agreement provides a promising first step, a tragic paradox exists between it and any further development—until Hezbollah is weakened, it will be hard to take the steps to weaken Hezbollah, and until that happens, there can never be a lasting ceasefire. As a result, Lebanon and the international community face the difficult choice of navigating between two potential futures. One direction will drag the region into another cycle of war; the other, while difficult and risky, could end the violence and eventually bring the conflict to a lasting end.
Following the latter path is relatively straightforward. Lebanon will need Israel to withdraw to the blue line that serves as an internationally recognized border. For Israel to withdraw, the threat to its northern border must be removed. As a result, any Israel Defense Force withdrawal can only happen if the Lebanese army immediately takes control of the area from which Israel withdrew. This action will only happen at scale, beyond the initial pilot zones, if the Lebanese army proves itself willing and able to conduct operations against Hezbollah and keep Hezbollah from posing a threat to Israel. The need for a demonstration of the Lebanese army’s ability and motivation means that any feasible deal will require multiple phases. First, the Lebanese army must show its ability to degrade Hezbollah and maintain security in areas less strategically significant to Israel. As Israel gains trust in the Lebanese army, Israel will hand over more of the security in Lebanon to the Lebanese army until Israel withdraws to the international border. Lebanese army control will also enable reconstruction efforts that are not tied to Hezbollah and therefore are not used to support illicit military infrastructure.
With the armed capabilities of Hezbollah significantly reduced and Israeli forces out of Lebanon, the stage will be set for establishing peace between the two countries. Nothing about this formulation is original or unknown to the parties involved. It has, in one configuration or another, formed the basis of every furtive attempt to end the conflict over the last 20 years. Currently, thanks to the high level of motivation of Lebanon’s government and Israel’s weakening of Hezbollah, a better chance of success now exists; however, a powerful paradox hampers efforts and chains the parties to the status quo.
The international community has made several attempts to enable the Lebanese government and the Lebanese army. While many initiatives, such as the addition of UNIFIL II following UN Resolution 1701 in 2006, have appeared to be on the right track, they largely failed in implementation. The November 2024 ceasefire agreement and the subsequent Lebanese army five-stage plan, dubbed “Homeland Shield,” are no exception. Following an Israeli withdrawal from all but five border positions in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese army deployed to the region. While it seized more Hezbollah weapons than in previous attempts, despite the widespread deployment, the implementation was again severely limited. For the most part, the Lebanese army would not search private property, and Hezbollah often moved its critical systems before Lebanese army raids. When fighting with Israel broke out again, Hezbollah operatives returned to the areas in which the Lebanese army had operated and took up the capabilities stored there. Thus, when fighting broke out again, Hezbollah forces south of the Litani River lacked no critical arms. In the case of Lebanon, the first steps of declaring an intent to disarm and deploying its army tend to be easy, but in past cases, the follow-through remained unrealized.
A golden rule that underlies political decision making in Lebanon can best be expressed as “do not risk a return to civil war.” Political violence has plagued Lebanon since shortly after foreign forces left the newly independent country in 1946. By the late 1950s, Lebanon had fallen into a period of violence, culminating in US intervention in 1958. Political violence continued to increase through the 1970s. By the mid-1970s, the country had fallen into a brutal civil war with reciprocal atrocities, sexual violence, and massacres against civilians, the worst of which lasted until 1990.
The last vestiges of the civil war divisions of Lebanon did not end until the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, yet Lebanon may still sit on a knife-edge. The fear of a return to the horrors of civil war is rational. In 2008 and 2010, Hezbollah demonstrated a willingness to drag Lebanon back into its dark past by attacking other sects, including in response to government policies that diminished Hezbollah’s power. For decisionmakers in Lebanon, this ever-present threat means any actions against Hezbollah, unless Hezbollah is significantly weakened, risk violating the golden rule of Lebanon. This dilemma creates the first and most serious manifestation of the paradox. To mitigate the threat of a return to civil war, Lebanon must weaken Hezbollah; however, to weaken Hezbollah sufficiently, Lebanon must be freed from the threat of a return to civil war.
If the threat of civil war and the risk it poses to Lebanon and its people were not enough, there is the matter of personal courage. Pundits suggest that acting against Hezbollah is a question of political will, but this assumption underestimates the danger to politicians (such as President Joseph Aoun) and their families. Hezbollah has shown its willingness to assassinate political figures in Lebanon who oppose Hezbollah or its backers’ interests. Hezbollah’s Unit 121 carries out political assassinations in Lebanon, and it has repeatedly proven its ability to act with impunity, murdering everyone from rival politicians to former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, as well as members of Lebanon’s security forces. This bloody history means those who sign an agreement with Israel put the electoral future in jeopardy and their lives and those of their families at risk. As with the threat of a civil war, the weaker Hezbollah becomes, the better chance those who act against it will have to survive their choice. Until Hezbollah is sufficiently degraded, this second iteration of the paradox means that taking the actions needed to weaken it will require acts of unusual personal courage.
Finally, even if Lebanon’s government leaders were to violate the golden rule and have the personal courage to risk their and their families’ lives, the same circular logic that traps Lebanon in the status quo would apply. Outstanding questions remain as to the capability of the Lebanese security forces and military to act effectively against Hezbollah in anything but a localized manner. The likelihood of success would increase if the Lebanese army received an influx of equipment and training to aid in its fight against Hezbollah. Here, the binding paradox reappears—Israel will not be comfortable with a significant increase in Lebanese army capabilities until the Lebanese army demonstrates it can successfully act against Hezbollah. This quandary stems from a rational fear on the part of the international community that the training and equipment given to the Lebanese army might end up with Hezbollah, especially since there have been past incidents of collusion and cases where Lebanese soldiers attacked Israel, allegedly at Hezbollah’s command, marking the third iteration of Lebanon’s tragic paradox. For the Lebanese army to develop sufficient capabilities to act against Hezbollah, it needs to act against Hezbollah.
While the paradox of Lebanon and Hezbollah makes progress difficult, there may still be a way forward. International support, Israeli actions, and the right small steps in the right order may sufficiently degrade Hezbollah and build enough capability, resilience, and confidence in Lebanon and Israel for the cause of eventual peace to advance. The risks of civil war and assassinations—even more than the Lebanese army’s relative weakness—are paramount in holding Lebanon back. Unless these risks are mitigated successfully, the pilot zone program will make local gains and then freeze while the Israeli occupation lingers. Eventually, escalation will again occur, and Lebanon will find itself dragged into the destructive whirlpool formed by the status quo and repeated wars.
Together, the Lebanese government and its international partners must chart a tight course between Scylla and Charybdis. Steering too far and too quickly into a confrontation with Hezbollah will lead to violence and civil war but avoiding it will drag Lebanon into an endless cycle of violence and destruction. Lebanon and its partners must understand that, as with the choice between Scylla and Charybdis, any way forward for Lebanon will entail high costs and pain. By working together, all parties interested in a positive future for Israel and Lebanon can steer between the dangers of drowning in a cycle of repeated wars with Israel or being devoured by the dangers Hezbollah poses to the country. Through carefully calibrated navigation, with sacrifices from all parties, and by mitigating the most serious risks, Israel and Lebanon can see a better future.
Keywords: Middle East security, Hezbollah disarmament, Israel-Lebanon conflict, Israel-Lebanon ceasefire, Lebanese armed forces
Jacob Stoil
Dr. Jacob Stoil is the research professor of Middle East security at the United States Army War College Strategic Research and Assessment Department, chair of applied history at the West Point Modern War Institute, and a trustee of the United States Commission on Military History. He serves as assistant director of the Second World War Research Group (North America) and holds a doctor of philosophy from Oxford University and a master of arts degree from King’s College London.
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