Lebanese Presidents and Hezbollah: From Containment to Confrontation

For more than three decades, Lebanon’s presidents have handled Hezbollah according to the balance of power inside the country and the pressures surrounding it. The central question has been whether the group should be treated as an armed militia or recognized as a resistance force.

The decision to exempt Hezbollah from disarmament marked the first clear breach of the Taif Agreement, which required all militias that fought in Lebanon’s civil war to dissolve and surrender their weapons. During President Elias Hrawi’s tenure, Syrian control over Lebanon’s political decisions, coordinated with Iran, prevented Hezbollah from being treated like the other militias. Damascus instead promoted it from militia to resistance force.

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the Israeli occupation of part of southern Lebanon and Syria’s control over the internal political game imposed a distinction between Hezbollah and the other Lebanese militias that existed during the civil war.

That arrangement survived Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon on May 25, 2000. Hezbollah then remained both a political and military actor, with capabilities that exceeded those of Lebanon’s state institutions. When Army Commander Emile Lahoud became president in October 1998 with Syrian backing, the group’s influence inside the state strengthened, particularly after the Israeli withdrawal.

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led to Hezbollah being elevated from the status of a militia to that of a resistance force, while the other militias were dissolved and disarmed.

Successive governments later embedded the formula of “army, people and resistance” in their ministerial statements, especially after Israel’s July 2006 war in Lebanon. Michel Suleiman largely maintained the same approach, even after Syrian troops left Lebanon on April 25, 2005, under American pressure and after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri.

Fares Saeed, head of the Saydet al-Jabal Gathering, says the distinction arose from two conditions: Israel’s occupation of part of southern Lebanon and Syria’s control of Lebanese political life. He argues that Israel’s withdrawal in 2000, together with the death of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, gave the Maronite Council of Bishops, led by Patriarch Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir, grounds to demand the withdrawal of Syrian forces. Saeed describes that position as “historic and courageous,” asking why Syrian forces should remain after Israel had left southern Lebanon.

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This historic and courageous position was based on a clear logic.