A security deal brokered between Israel and Lebanon is drawing sharp criticism from regional analysts and politicians who say it is structurally unworkable, built on a condition that cannot be met and likely to give Israel indefinite grounds to stay in southern Lebanon rather than leave it.
The deal ties Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon to the disarmament of Hezbollah. The problem is that Hezbollah has outright refused to disarm, and Lebanon’s government has neither the power nor the tools to force it. Analysts say that arrangement effectively hands Israel a permanent justification for keeping troops in Lebanese territory.
“This is not an agreement, it is an imposed settlement,” said a senior Lebanese politician who declined to be named. The Lebanese army, he said, was neither structured nor equipped to disarm Hezbollah, and expecting it to do so ignored both the group’s entrenched military capacity and the fragile sectarian balance on which Lebanon’s stability rests.
An impossible condition at the center
Israel invaded southern Lebanon after Hezbollah fired at Israel on March 2, in a show of solidarity with Tehran during the broader war in Iran. About 4,000 people have been killed in Lebanon since, and roughly a million displaced.
The framework deal signed in Washington affirms Israel holds no claim to Lebanese territory, but makes Lebanese army authority in the south contingent on the verified disarmament of Hezbollah and other armed groups. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called it a historic step toward broader peace, while Israeli troops remain deployed in what Israel describes as a security zone in the south.
“We will continue to hold it until Hezbollah and other terrorist organisations are disarmed, and until no further threat to Israel is posed from Lebanon,” Netanyahu said on Saturday.
Three senior Israeli officials acknowledged that Israel has little confidence Lebanon can disarm Hezbollah, but described the deal as a necessary diplomatic step toward long-term peace. That framing leaves the withdrawal timeline open-ended, with Hezbollah’s disarmament as the moving goalpost.
Analysts: the burden falls entirely on Lebanon
Michael Young, a Beirut-based analyst, said the agreement’s design places sweeping obligations on Lebanon while offering no reciprocal guarantee of Israeli withdrawal. “This agreement has put all the burden on Lebanon,” he said, adding that it “creates a structure that allows the Israelis to remain indefinitely.”
Fawaz Gerges, a Lebanese scholar at the London School of Economics, went further, calling the deal “born dead” because it hinges on a condition that cannot realistically be met. Israel has already consolidated a buffer zone in southern Lebanon roughly eight to ten kilometers deep, he said, and tying any future withdrawal to disarmament risks making that buffer zone permanent while giving it diplomatic legitimacy. He described the arrangement as a political gift to Israel.
Gerges also said Washington’s decision to decouple the Lebanon conflict from the broader U.S.-Iran negotiations gave Israel more freedom of action in Lebanon with less external pressure to pull back.
Lebanon’s political system cannot deliver what the deal demands
Lebanon’s post-civil war structure is built around sectarian power-sharing rather than coercion. Asking the state to confront Hezbollah, the most powerful armed faction in the country, runs directly against that architecture. The Lebanese army has never been equipped or tasked with enforcing disarmament against a group with Hezbollah’s firepower and political depth.
Danny Citrinowicz, a regional analyst and former Israeli military intelligence officer, said Hezbollah’s dismantlement was “something that would never happen” and that the deal effectively legitimizes a long-term Israeli military presence. “Nothing will happen. Israel won’t withdraw, and Hezbollah won’t dismantle,” he said.
He argued that no Israeli prime minister has the domestic political room to pull troops out while Hezbollah remains armed and northern Israeli communities displaced by the fighting have not returned home. A narrower agreement, focused on Hezbollah pulling back from south of the Litani River, expanding the Lebanese army’s presence, and extending state authority in the region, would have had a better chance of actually being implemented, he said.
Hezbollah and its allies reject the deal outright
Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem declared the deal “null and void” and a “surrender,” saying his group would continue fighting until Israel is forced out. Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah warned that pushing for implementation could trigger “internal conflict.”
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a longtime Hezbollah ally, called the agreement one “of dictates, not one that preserves Lebanon’s rights,” and said it would not be carried out.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun took a different position, welcoming the deal as a first step toward restoring Lebanon’s sovereignty and allowing displaced Lebanese to return to fully liberated land. That gap between Aoun’s response and Berri’s reflects the divisions the agreement has already opened inside Lebanese politics.
Pro-Hezbollah analyst Mohammed Obeid said the deal was unlikely to be implemented and that its provisions were “like explosives,” capable of detonating Lebanon’s internal stability because they rest on the state taking action against Hezbollah. Attempting to forcibly disarm the group, he and others warned, risks setting off sectarian tensions.
Young put it plainly: the deal “won’t lead us anywhere except to civil conflict, and maybe an insurrection by the Shi’ite community.”
A stalemate with diplomatic cover
The deal’s critics converge on one central concern: rather than resolving the conflict, the agreement creates a framework that allows the stalemate to continue indefinitely, with Lebanon bearing the legal and political obligations of an agreement it cannot enforce, and Israel retaining troops on Lebanese soil with international legitimacy for doing so.
The Lebanon conflict has run alongside and fed into the wider U.S.-Iran war diplomacy. Its resolution, or lack of one, has knock-on effects for ceasefire efforts across the region. With Hezbollah refusing disarmament, Israel maintaining its security zone, and Lebanon’s government unable to close the gap between those two positions, the prospects for meaningful implementation remain distant.
George Mensah is a journalist covering global politics, international conflicts and economic developments for clicxpost. He specializes in breaking news analysis and geopolitical reporting.
