Lebanon's Justice Minister ordered the public prosecutor to arrest those who fired at Israel, extending Prime Minister Salam's earlier ban on all Hezbollah military activities. The order moves the government's confrontation with Hezbollah from political declaration — Salam called the group's attack on Israel 'irresponsible and suspicious' — to the legal system, directing prosecutors and security forces to act.
No Lebanese government has attempted this since the Taif Agreement ended the fifteen-year civil war in 1989. Taif required the dissolution of all militias, but Hezbollah was exempted under the justification of 'national resistance' against Israeli occupation — a rationale that persisted after Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000. UN Security Council Resolution 1559, adopted in 2004, called explicitly for militia disarmament. No government attempted enforcement.
The capability gap that prevented enforcement then persists now. The Lebanese Armed Forces have approximately 80,000 active personnel; Hezbollah's fighting strength is estimated at 30,000–50,000, with fighters who have recent combat experience from Syria (2012–2020) and operate from fortified positions across southern Lebanon, the Beqaa Valley, and Beirut's southern suburbs. The army's equipment — largely US-supplied M113 armoured carriers and M198 howitzers — was designed for conventional operations, not urban warfare against a dug-in force with anti-tank missiles and tunnel networks.
The arrest warrants may function as a political signal to Washington and Tel Aviv rather than an operational directive. But signals have consequences in Lebanese politics. In 2008, a far more limited challenge to Hezbollah — over its telecommunications network, not its fighters — triggered a seizure of the capital. Whether a weakened Hezbollah, its leadership under Israeli assassination campaigns and its Iranian patron's command structure fragmenting, responds with the same capacity is the question on which Lebanon's cohesion now depends.
