For the first time in years, the language surrounding Lebanon is no longer confined to ceasefires, border skirmishes, or UN resolutions. It is now the language of direct negotiation: Washington is preparing to host talks between Israel and Lebanon that kick off next week.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has authorized a diplomatic track cantered explicitly on Hezbollah’s disarmament, and Beirut itself is entering this process under unprecedented internal pressure. The vocabulary is stark and historic: “total disarmament,” “formal peaceful relations,” “state monopoly over weapons.” These are no longer abstract international demands; they are becoming the framework through which Lebanon’s future is being negotiated.

Yet what makes this moment extraordinary is that these negotiations are unfolding while Lebanon is still under bombardment, while southern towns like Bint Jbeil burn under active combat, and while the Lebanese state is confronting the most sensitive sovereignty question in its modern history: can it finally reclaim exclusive control over war and peace from Hezbollah?

The government of Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has now taken its boldest step yet. By ordering the Lebanese Armed Forces to impose a state monopoly over weapons inside Beirut Governorate, Salam has moved beyond symbolic declarations into direct confrontation with the military reality Hezbollah has imposed on Lebanon for decades. This follows the March 2 cabinet decree declaring all Hezbollah military activity illegal—an act that fundamentally alters the legal and political framework inside the country.

This is not merely an administrative decision. It is the culmination of a long and painful Lebanese struggle dating back to the Taif Agreement of 1989, when all militias were meant to dissolve after the Lebanese war.

Lebanon has tried before to challenge this imbalance and paid dearly each time. In 2008, when the government sought to dismantle Hezbollah’s private telecommunications network, the response came in the form of armed takeover: Hezbollah fighters seized West Beirut in hours, demonstrating that any attempt to curtail its strategic assets could trigger internal armed confrontation. Since then, every Lebanese government has approached the question of Hezbollah’s arms cautiously, aware that the issue sits at the fault line between sovereignty and civil war.

What distinguishes this moment is that the current confrontation was triggered not by domestic political manoeuvring alone, but by war itself.

Before the present escalation, Lebanon’s official leadership had explicitly attempted neutrality. Foreign Minister Youssef Rajji had publicly warned Hezbollah against entering any confrontation tied to an Israeli or American strike on Iran. The warning was clear: Lebanon could not survive another regional war that killed Ayatollah Khamenei. Yet Hezbollah, under Secretary-General Naim Qassem, rejected neutrality. When Hezbollah launched retaliatory attacks on March 2 after the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader, it did more than fire rockets, it unilaterally placed Lebanon inside a war the Lebanese state had explicitly refused.

That act may become the defining political rupture of this crisis.

For many Lebanese, this was the moment Hezbollah crossed from “resistance actor” into direct violator of national sovereignty. It was one thing for Hezbollah to justify its weapons as deterrence against Israel; it is another to drag an entire nation into a regional war against the declared will of its government.

Now, that rupture is reshaping public opinion. After years in which criticism of Hezbollah’s arms remained fragmented along sectarian lines, the war has produced an unusually broad consensus. Across Christian, Sunni, and Druze communities and increasingly among segments of the Shia population itself support is rising for the principle that only the Lebanese Army should bear arms. This shift reflects not ideology but exhaustion: decades of war, economic collapse, displacement, and repeated destruction have eroded the legitimacy of perpetual armed exception. And yet, the path forward is perilous...

This is why the Washington negotiations carry historic weight beyond diplomacy. They are not simply talks about border security or ceasefire mechanics; they are, in effect, negotiations over the future architecture of the Lebanese state. If Hezbollah’s arms become negotiable on the international table while the group still commands domestic coercive capacity, Lebanon may enter the most fragile transition since the end of the civil war.

In Bint Jbeil, where Israeli forces are pushing deeper into symbolic Hezbollah strongholds, the battlefield is already redrawing realities on the ground. In Beirut, meanwhile, the political center is attempting to redraw the internal map of sovereignty.

Lebanon thus stands at a defining crossroads: either this moment becomes the beginning of a long-delayed restoration of state authority, or it becomes the spark that ignites the most dangerous internal confrontation.

For decades, Lebanon’s tragedy has been that its wars were often decided outside its institutions. Today, even as negotiations begin abroad, the real question remains painfully domestic: can the Lebanese state reclaim itself?