The arrangement has one obvious flaw, and everybody involved is pretending not to see it. Lebanon and Israel have settled on a shortlist of states that might send soldiers to certify the disarmament of Hezbollah, under an American-brokered accord, and the United States will make the final call, with the option of choosing several countries at once. A Lebanese official confirmed the outline on Friday while refusing to say which states were in the running or how long the list was. The party whose weapons are to be certified has not signed anything, and says it will not give them up.
The list took shape at the American embassy in Rome this week, in the latest session on carrying out the June 26 agreement that ties Israel’s staggered exit from Lebanese territory to a verified dismantling of Hezbollah’s arsenal. That accord followed five rounds of American-brokered consultations in Washington. According to the Lebanese official, each side ruled out the candidates it could not accept, and the names that survived the cuts are what remain. Washington, he said, will now decide, and the door is open to selecting several states at once. Earlier reporting indicated that France was crossed off by both Israel and the United States. Everything after the selection is still open: the size of any deployment, its relationship with the Lebanese army, and the legal footing for foreign soldiers on Lebanese soil.
That last question is where the mechanics get complicated. One model would place the foreign force under UNIFIL, the United Nations peacekeeping mission whose mandate expires in December, a move that would demand a fresh Security Council resolution. In the Lebanese official’s telling, it is a breakthrough that Washington and Jerusalem are now open to that route. Other possibilities include a separate UN agency arrangement or a memorandum of understanding with Beirut. The one option Lebanon has rejected outright is private security firms doing the verification; the official said only states are acceptable.
None of this has moved Hezbollah. The group is not a signatory, has said publicly that it will not disarm, and continues to operate in the south while the deal is being built around its refusal. The war that produced the June 26 agreement has run since March, alongside the wider American-Israeli campaign against Iran. After Washington and Jerusalem struck Iran on February 28, Hezbollah fired into Israel in a show of solidarity with Tehran. Israel answered with air power and a ground push that took a strip of southern Lebanon about ten kilometers (6 miles) deep, and more than a million civilians fled their homes. In that landscape, a verification scheme that the armed group rejects is a document floating above a war it does not control.
The unresolved details are the usual ones, and they are not small. There is no deal on the next zone Israeli forces would hand over to the Lebanese army. Beirut has put forward Bint Jbeil and Khiam, two towns that took heavy bombardment and where Israeli troops have leveled whole neighborhoods. The next meeting is scheduled for early September. Israel’s foreign ministry offered no immediate comment, and Washington confined itself to calling the talks productive at the technical and expert levels. An adviser to the Israeli prime minister has said progress depends on concrete, verifiable Lebanese steps to disarm Hezbollah, and that Israel’s security is not a bargaining chip.
The shortlist is progress of a kind: two governments that have spent months fighting now agree on a menu of potential monitors. But a verification process needs a subject that accepts it. The witnesses have been picked; the accused has not entered the room.