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Alma Center Head Asks, Is Lebanon ‘Brave Enough’ To Disarm Hezbollah?
Israel cannot settle for another ceasefire, Sarit Zehavi says, while Hezbollah remains “the mistress in the room”
By Gabriel Colodro/The Media Line
Israeli officials are still debating what comes next in southern Lebanon, including whether to pursue a more permanent ceasefire. For Sarit Zehavi, founder and president of the Alma Research and Education Center, the real question is not the pause itself but whether it produces a lasting change in the security reality along Israel’s northern border.
Zehavi said the current debate cannot be understood without revisiting what she sees as the central failure of the past two decades. “Between May 2000 and until actually the end of the previous war in 2023, there was no Israeli presence in Lebanon and there was no buffer zone in Lebanon,” she told The Media Line. The area south of the Litani River, she noted, was supposed to be free of “any illegitimate weapon,” but “it never happened and nobody enforced that.”
In her account, the problem did not begin with the current campaign. After Israel’s maneuver in 2024, the army remained on only five hills overlooking Israeli communities, a posture she said quickly proved inadequate. Hezbollah’s Radwan forces were still able to maneuver near the border, she said, while rockets could be launched from both north and south of the Litani.
That, she said, is why the prime minister ordered the IDF to push as far as the river itself. The Litani zone was meant to be disarmed, she argued, but in practice never was. “We are going to do that. We are going to control there and we are going to make sure that Hezbollah is not there and it’s not capable of coming back there, because that’s the key issue.”
Zehavi rejected the language of occupation, saying it distorts Israel’s objective. “I don’t accept the word occupation, because we have no interest in keeping lands of Lebanon,” she said. “We want to make peace with Lebanon.” But, she stressed, peace and a ceasefire are not the same thing. “We are not interested in just another ceasefire,” she said. “It will not only fail to solve the problem but … will enable Hezbollah to rebuild and to threaten us again.”
In her view, restoring security for northern Israel cannot be achieved by Israeli military action alone because Hezbollah has become deeply embedded in Lebanese society and state institutions. “Providing security to the citizens of northern Israel is not just an Israeli effort, unfortunately, because Hezbollah became entrenched into the Lebanese society and into the Lebanese administration and government,” she said, adding that any serious effort would require Israel, the Lebanese government, and the international community to act in tandem.
She tied that challenge directly to Iran, which she described as Hezbollah’s patron and strategic center of gravity. Hezbollah’s dependence on Tehran, she argued, extends beyond funding and weapons to training, ideology, and loyalty to Iran’s leadership. “You need to understand the boss of Hezbollah is Iran,” she said. “Hezbollah gets from Iran the money, the weapons, the training and the ideology.” She added that “the core mission of Hezbollah is not to fight Israel,” but rather “to distribute the Islamic revolution values across the Middle East, starting from Lebanon,” including in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
That broader role, she said, helps explain why developments in Iran and Lebanon are inseparable. Hezbollah embodies, in her telling, both “loyalty to the supreme leader of Iran” and “the extinction of the State of Israel.” If the Islamic Republic were to fall, she argued, Hezbollah would struggle to preserve both its political standing and its military power in Lebanon. “Hezbollah will have high difficulties in preserving its power in Lebanon, especially in preserving its military power in Lebanon, if the Islamic Republic in Iran will fall,” she said. “That’s why what will happen in Iran has a great impact on what will happen in Lebanon.”
She said the reverse is also true: a genuine Lebanese effort to curb Hezbollah would weaken one of Tehran’s most valuable regional assets. As evidence, she pointed to recent diplomacy. “When Israel demanded to be capable of continuing the attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Iranians in their negotiations with the Americans insisted that the ceasefire will include what is happening in Lebanon,” she said, “you can understand what kind of an asset Hezbollah is for the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Inside Lebanon, Zehavi described a country split over Hezbollah’s role. She said the organization is rooted in the Shiite Muslim community and operates alongside the state as what she called a “state within a state.” Supporters and opponents of Hezbollah hold “complete opposite positions,” she said, while Lebanon’s current leadership wants to disarm the group, open negotiations with Israel, and fundamentally alter the country’s trajectory. “The leaders of Lebanon today, meaning the prime minister and the president, are against Hezbollah,” she said. “They want to disarm Hezbollah. They want to have negotiations with Israel. They want to create a thorough change in Lebanon. But the question is, are they brave enough to take the risks around it?”
The danger, she said, is that any move against Hezbollah could trigger internal conflict. “Hezbollah is threatening that any action against it will end up in a civil war.” Lebanon’s sectarian structure makes the issue even more combustible, she argued. “There is a constant campaign between the different religious sects in Lebanon,” she said, describing identity there as something “much deeper” than belief or ritual alone. “Being a Christian in Lebanon is very different from being a Muslim Shiite in Lebanon and very different from being a Muslim Sunni in Lebanon.”
Hezbollah’s power, in her telling, rests not only on arms but also on the parallel system of services it provides in southern Lebanon. She said that infrastructure includes schools, ambulances, banks, supermarkets, pharmacies, gas stations, and even control over hospitals. Pointing to Bint Jbeil, she cited the IDF’s claim that Hezbollah weapons were found in the town’s hospital. “Why weapons in the hospital?” she said. “Because Hezbollah controls the hospital, not the Lebanese government.”
“There are schools of Hezbollah in South Lebanon. There are ambulances of Hezbollah in South Lebanon. Banks, supermarkets, pharmacies, gas stations, everything is provided by Hezbollah,” she said. That network, she argued, helps the group preserve its arsenal and conceal weapons “inside the houses of the Muslim Shiites.”
Zehavi also acknowledged the constraints imposed by Israel’s alliance with Washington. “The American-Israeli alliance puts restraints on the Israeli decision-making,” she said. “I think this is natural.” At the same time, she said the relationship has brought major military advantages, helping Israel act forcefully against Iran and sustain operations against Hezbollah over time.
Still, she warned that US pressure for a ceasefire could prove counterproductive if it comes before meaningful guarantees on the ground. “It looks like the Americans now want to get a ceasefire in Iran, and the way to get there goes through Lebanon, unfortunately,” she said. “I’m saying unfortunately, not because I don’t want peace, because I want peace, but as I’ve said, peace and ceasefire are not the same thing.”
Zehavi then shifted from strategy to personal experience, describing life in northern Israel after October 7 and after Hezbollah joined the fighting. “On October 8, I evacuated my kids,” she said. “For many weeks, I slept with my shoes next to my bed, prepared to escape if there are terrorists in my town.” She described a routine measured in seconds, with sirens, rushed decisions about the nearest shelter, and roads chosen based on whether protection was available. “I heard the blast above me before I got to the bomb shelter because it’s not enough [time],” she said. “All of them were very close to my house. All of them threatened my little girl.”
That experience, she said, is why residents of the north do not want a return to what she sees as a failed formula. “We don’t want just another ceasefire that will not solve the problem. We want peace. We want a peace agreement with the state of Lebanon, while Hezbollah is not the mistress in the room that is actually disturbing us to make peace.”
Asked what would actually need to change, Zehavi returned to both the military and political fronts. Israel, she said, should hold ground up to the Litani River and continue striking Hezbollah targets, including in Dahieh and along the Lebanon-Syria border. The Lebanese government, she added, would also have to move against Hezbollah’s financing, domestic activity, and Iranian ties—steps she said have not yet been taken.
Her criticism extended beyond Beirut. “The international community should be part of the American-Israeli campaign against the Islamic Republic because this is an enemy of the international community,” she said. She sharply rejected what she sees as a Western preference for de-escalation over resolution. “De-escalation is not solving the problem,” she said. “De-escalation is creating a bigger problem. This is the lesson we learned from October 7.”
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