Lebanese Forces escalate: Hezbollah’s weapons violate the constitution and international resolutions and undermine the establishment of the Lebanese state

The media department of the Lebanese Forces party issued the following statement:

We will neither tire nor grow weary of responding to the “logic” of the resistance-axis camp, even though their rhetoric is tiresome and far removed from any real logic. Responding to them — specifically to what Sheikh Naim Qassem said yesterday — has become something of a source of astonishment, not because his remarks contain anything new, but because this camp is still speaking the same language as if nothing had happened in Lebanon over recent years, as if Israel had not entered south of the Litani, as if more than a million Lebanese had not been displaced, dozens of towns had not been destroyed, thousands had not been killed or wounded, and as if the Lebanese had not once again lived through tragedies and horrors because of Hezbollah’s armed project.

And yet, this camp insists on ignoring all the facts solely in order to keep its weapons, in defiance of the will of the state and the Lebanese people. Returning to some of what Sheikh Naim Qassem said, he is still talking about the November 27, 2024 agreement, claiming that this agreement was implemented by Hezbollah. The truth is that this agreement was approved with its consent and with the consent of the government, of which the party was a key part, and it clearly stipulates that arms must be confined to the hands of the Lebanese state and that all illegal military bodies must be dissolved, so that the right to bear arms remains only with the official legitimate institutions — from the army and security forces to the municipal police. This clearly means that Hezbollah’s weapons are illegitimate and in violation of both the text and the spirit of the agreement.

The agreement also explicitly stipulated that disarmament should begin south of the Litani and extend to all Lebanese territory. But Hezbollah did not comply, while Israel used its non-compliance as a pretext to justify its own failure to comply.

As for Sheikh Naim Qassem’s talk of the “weakness of the state,” this completely contradicts the facts, because no one has weakened the Lebanese state more than Hezbollah itself, through its illegal weapons, its continued refusal to abide by state decisions, and its insistence on keeping Lebanon hostage to its military and security project.

With regard to the claim that the Lebanese government is carrying out “American and Israeli orders” on the issue of weapons, this is entirely false. Hezbollah’s weapons were supposed to have been handed over in 1991 after the end of the Lebanese war, but the party refused to comply with the law and the constitution. When Resolution 1559 was issued, it refused to surrender its weapons, and when Resolution 1701 was issued, it refused again, all the way to the November 27, 2024 agreement, which it still refuses to implement in practice.

Accordingly, the existence of these weapons in itself constitutes a clear violation of the Lebanese constitution and the relevant international resolutions, while the majority of the Lebanese people clearly want to put an end to this abnormal situation and support the decisions taken by the Lebanese government on August 5 and 7, 2025, and on March 2, 2026, because the Lebanese want the establishment of a real state, not an armed mini-state above the state.

More than 80% of the Lebanese support these decisions, because they realize that the continuation of illegal weapons has become nothing more than a permanent pretext for inviting wars and destruction and for keeping Lebanon an open arena for confrontations.

As for the talk of the “Greater Israel project,” it is a new attempt to evade the truth in order to preserve the illegal weapons that destroyed Lebanon. Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, and the one that brought it back again was Hezbollah in the 2006 war, then it brought it back again on October 8, 2023, leading to the confrontations, destruction, and disasters that followed.

As for Sheikh Naim Qassem’s remarks about the centenary of the constitution and his question as to whether the authorities abide by the constitution, the first party to violate the Lebanese constitution, the first to obstruct the establishment of the state, and the first to strike at the concept of sovereignty and monopolize the decision of war and peace, was Hezbollah itself through its weapons and military project.

Had these weapons not existed, and had this project not been imposed on the Lebanese by force, Lebanon would today be in a completely different place, and the southern villages and all the other areas destroyed by wars would be enjoying stability instead of ruin and countless losses.

What is required today is clear and self-evident: implementing the constitution, international resolutions, and government decisions, and for Hezbollah to make way for the Lebanese state to regain its full sovereignty, extend its authority over all its territory, and effectively work to restore stability and save Lebanon and the Lebanese from the cycle of wars and ongoing collapse.