Hezbollah is rearming, putting cease-fire at risk

The intelligence shows Iranian-backed Hezbollah is restocking rockets, antitank missiles and artillery, the people said. Some of those weapons are coming in via seaports and weakened but still functional smuggling routes through Syria, some of the people said. Hezbollah is manufacturing some new weapons itself, one of the people said.

The rearmament is straining an agreement that ended a punishing two-month Israeli campaign against the group a year ago. Lebanon is required to start disarming Hezbollah in parts of Lebanon under the deal, before continuing to the entire country as per a previous agreement. But the group has since dug in its heels, saying its weapons are needed to defend Lebanon’s sovereignty.

Israel, which has provided intelligence to help the Lebanese army disarm Hezbollah and has carried out more than 1,000 strikes of its own against the group since a cease-fire deal was signed last November, is losing patience, the people said. It was angered by the new intelligence findings and that the matter at issue had shifted from Hezbollah’s disarmament to Hezbollah’s rearmament in just a few months, one of the people familiar with the matter said.

“Should Beirut continue to hesitate, Israel may act unilaterally—and the consequences would be grave," Tom Barrack, U.S. ambassador to Turkey and a key American envoy for Lebanon and Syria, said in October.

Lebanese leaders, through Arab and American intermediaries, are asking Israel for patience and are open to increasing intelligence-sharing and coordination with Israel despite the neighboring states being technically at war.

The office of Lebanon’s prime minister declined to comment. The presidency and military didn’t respond to requests for comment. Hezbollah officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Naim Qassem, the current head of Hezbollah, said in an interview aired on a Hezbollah-linked television channel in October that there should be coordination between the Lebanese military and Hezbollah, but that attempts to disarm the group should be resisted. He said Hezbollah is seeking to avoid another war with Israel and has avoided military responses to Israeli strikes on Lebanon since the truce.

The standoff highlights the difficulty of quashing an established militia with a base of support among the population even when it has been badly beaten.

The difficulties are also evident in Gaza, where Hamas is resisting demands that it disarm and relinquish power, requirements of President Trump’s deal to end the two-year war in the enclave.

Hamas lost thousands of fighters during the war and angered many Gazans for bringing on such destruction. But once the cease-fire began nearly three weeks ago, Hamas launched a crackdown on rivals to shore up its authority and has since skirmished repeatedly with Israeli troops.

Hezbollah sprang from Lebanon’s Shiite community more than four decades ago and has survived a number of fights with Israel. It picked a new one after Hamas carried out its deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, by firing rockets into Israel on a near-daily basis and forcing the evacuation of communities in Israel’s north. Israel’s response last fall was the most damaging to Hezbollah of their many conflicts, with thousands of airstrikes against the group and the triggering of near-simultaneous explosions of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies that decimated its ranks.

Last November’s cease-fire agreement states that disarmament efforts should begin south of the Litani River, which defines a zone about 20 miles deep running roughly parallel to the border with Israel. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam both have publicly advocated for Hezbollah to be disarmed in the rest of the country and for the state to have a monopoly on force.

The Lebanese government has made progress dismantling Hezbollah positions and weapons in the southernmost areas of Lebanon, which have long been under Hezbollah’s control and were battered by Israel’s ground and air campaign last year. Disarmament there has frequently been conducted with Hezbollah’s assent.

But other areas with significant Hezbollah influence, such as Beirut’s southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley running through eastern Lebanon, have seen little progress amid resistance from the militant group.

Lebanon’s leaders are in a sensitive position. Their military is outmanned by Hezbollah. Politically isolating Hezbollah could leave the country’s Shiite population, hundreds of thousands of whom support Hezbollah, feeling marginalized and less attached to the state. The country’s leaders worry a confrontation could plunge Lebanon back into the sort of civil war that plagued it for much of the second half of the 20th century.

“The Lebanese military isn’t interested or ready to confront Hezbollah militarily," said Randa Slim, a fellow at the Johns Hopkins University-based Foreign Policy Institute and an expert on conflict resolution.

“We are stuck in this gray area where the Lebanese government says it has taken the decision to disarm Hezbollah. They are implementing it south of the Litani. But there is nothing, no concrete plans, about what happens north of the Litani," Slim said.

The growing frustration underscores how hard it is to turn a halt in intense fighting into a durable peace. It also shows the limits of disarming groups by force of arms.

“What more can Israel do to achieve its desired outcome than what they had already been doing?" Slim said. “Are they going to invade the south again? Are they going to come all the way to Beirut and hunt Hezbollah operatives there?"

Israel has struck Lebanon about 1,000 times from the air and more than 500 times with artillery since the cessation of hostilities in November last year, according to Acled, a conflict data tracking organization. Israel has been striking what it says are Hezbollah targets around Beirut and elsewhere. The U.S. isn’t urging restraint, a senior Western official said.

Israel also has stationed troops in several positions in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah has yet to attempt a significant military response.

The hum of Israeli drones is a constant across swaths of Lebanon. More than 60,000 people are still displaced after fleeing their homes during the fighting, according to an October report from the International Organization for Migration. Reconstruction efforts in parts of the country damaged by Israeli strikes have stalled, as both Hezbollah and the Lebanese government are strapped for cash, and Western and Gulf Arab states are reluctant to fund work until disarmament makes more progress.

Hezbollah officials said in interviews with The Wall Street Journal earlier this year that while the group has been weakened by Israel’s military campaign, it has ways to rearm if it chooses. They said Hezbollah’s weapons are a point of strength for Lebanon, arguing that the military, one of the weakest in the Middle East, can’t defend the country from Israel.

Arab intelligence officials say Hezbollah is returning to a more decentralized structure, similar to how it operated in the 1980s and how Hamas has shifted its tactics in Gaza. While both groups have recruited new fighters to fill their ranks, their military leaderships are still in disarray, some of the people familiar with intelligence said. Even so, neither appears to be giving up.

“Hezbollah does not feel like it has been defeated," Slim said. “It still thinks it can reconstitute, and it still has a regional supporter of the party in Iran."

Write to Omar Abdel-Baqui at omar.abdel-baqui@wsj.com and Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com