Can the Lebanese Army Be Trusted to Crack Down on Hezbollah?

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The ceasefire between Hezbollah and the IDF that the Americans helped to broker was based on the belief that the Lebanese Army, if adequately funded by Washington, would be able to force Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon and made to pull back north of the Litani River. Then the Lebanese National Army would take control of all Lebanese territory from the Litani south to the border with Israel, and at the same time, the IDF would pull out of Lebanon altogether. But the Lebanese Army has been slow to move southward, leaving Hezbollah mostly in place, while its operatives have been hiding weapons that they hope to repossess at a later date when they reemerge south of the Litani to make war on the Jewish state. And now there is evidence of collaboration between officers in the Lebanese Army and Hezbollah. More on this dangerous development can be found here: “Lebanese army chief exposed for leaking secrets to Hezbollah during ceasefire,” by Yonah Jeremy Bob, Jerusalem Post, January 27, 2025:

A Lebanese army chief leaked military secrets to the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group during the ceasefire period with Israel, Britain’s The Times reported citing intelligence sources, and the Jerusalem Post independently confirmed.

The head of military intelligence for southern Lebanon, Suhil Bahij Gharb, reportedly handed Hezbollah classified and sensitive information while in a room run by the US, France, and the UN interim force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), a source claimed….

Did no one in that room notice this handover by the Lebanese Army intelligence official of classified documents to a Hezbollah operative? Were the American, French, and UNIFIL forces present, or did they only “run the room” where the various parties, including Hezbollah, could meet with one another?

Gharb, according to a report seen by The Times, is only one of dozens of military officials who have allegedly leaked information to Hezbollah. His presence in the security room was reportedly prompted by senior Hezbollah commander Wafiq Safa, who insisted on his presence.

The information granted to Hezbollah has reportedly given them advance notice of Israeli searches – allowing the terrorists to relocate personnel and weapons.

The intelligence document stated, “Hezbollah uses internal, sensitive information regarding the Lebanese army to hide its actions from the international entities in charge of regional security.”

“The fact that the top echelon of the military maintains close ties with the US does not prevent co-operation between army officers, even on an individual basis, with Hezbollah,” Hilal Khashan, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut, told the British paper. “Hezbollah’s survival hinges not on maintaining a military presence in the south but preserving the gains accrued to it in the Lebanese political system during the past three decades. Hezbollah’s operatives in the south Litani are local Shia residents, and I do not think Israel can force relocating them to the north [of the] Litani.”…

This is an admission that Hezbollah cannot be uprooted from the area south of the Litani River. It is too deeply embedded in the warp and woof of the Shi’a villages; many of those villagers are in fact Hezbollah operatives, ready at any moment, if given the word, to take part in attacks on northern Israel. They are thus akin to army reservists.

The withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon in 2006 was supposed to be accompanied by a similar move by Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon that never occurred.

UN Security Council Resolution 1701 not only called for a withdrawal of all foreign forces from Lebanon — save for the 10,000 UNIFIL troops who were supposed to monitor the peace in southern Lebanon — but required all groups in Lebanon other than the Lebanese Army, to completely disarm. This was aimed primarily at Hezbollah. And for nearly twenty years, Hezbollah has refused to disarm.

What does this transfer of secret information, including that about the IDF’s planned operations to uncover Hezbollah hideouts, by a member of the Lebanese Army to a Hezbollah official, mean? It means that the Lebanese National Army has in its upper ranks sympathizers with Hezbollah, and the IDF must make clear that, given this infiltration, it will have to remain in southern Lebanon because the Lebanese Army cannot be trusted to remove what remains of Hezbollah.