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Lebanese Army Walks Political Tightrope to Disarm Hezbollah
A Lebanese military vehicle drives, after Israeli troops withdrew from most of south Lebanon, in Mays al-Jabal, near the border with Israel, southern Lebanon, Feb. 19, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Yassin
Lebanon’s army has blown up so many Hezbollah arms caches that it has run out of explosives, as it races to meet a year-end deadline to disarm the Iran-backed Shi’ite terrorist group in the south of the country under a ceasefire agreed with Israel, two sources told Reuters.
The explosives shortage, which has not been previously reported, has not stopped the army quickening the pace of inspection missions to search for hidden weapons in the south, near Israel, the two said, one of whom is a security source and the other a Lebanese official.
It would have been unimaginable for Lebanon’s military to embark on such a task at the zenith of Hezbollah‘s power just a few years ago, and many observers were skeptical even after the ceasefire agreement.
But Hezbollah was hit hard by Israel’s war last year, which killed thousands of fighters and the upper echelons of both the military and political wings, including leader Hassan Nasrallah. The war also killed more than 1,100 women and children and destroyed swathes of Lebanon’s south and east.
The US has kept up pressure on Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah, which is designated a terrorist group by Washington. President Donald Trump’s deputy Middle East envoy Morgan Ortagus is in Beirut this week to discuss momentum on disarmament with Lebanese officials.
As they wait for US deliveries of explosives charges and other military equipment, Lebanese troops are now sealing off sites they find instead of destroying them, said one of the sources and two other people briefed on the army‘s recent activities.
Their searches yielded nine new arms caches in September, the two other briefed officials said. The security source said dozens of tunnels used by Hezbollah had also been sealed and more soldiers were being steadily recruited to deploy to the south.
Reuters spoke to 10 people including Lebanese officials, security sources, diplomats, and a Hezbollah official, all of whom said the army expects to complete its sweep of the south by the year’s end.
Meeting the deadline would be a considerable feat for an institution once unable or unwilling to stop Hezbollah rebuilding a military presence near Israel after a previous war in 2006 – and for a country in which Hezbollah was once the dominant political force.
ARMY STEPS CAUTIOUSLY ELSEWHERE IN LEBANON
Progress in the rest of the country looks far less certain.
Despite its advances, the army wants to avoid inflaming tensions and to buy time for Lebanon’s politicians to reach a consensus about the group’s arsenal in other parts of the country, a second Lebanese official who is close to Hezbollah and two security sources said.
It has not published images of the work destroying weapons caches, or even said the weapons belong to Hezbollah.
Under the November 2024 ceasefire that ended more than a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, Lebanon agreed that only state security forces should bear arms in the country. That would mean fully disarming Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has publicly committed to the ceasefire but is not a formal signatory. It insists the disarmament as mentioned in the text only applies only to the south of Lebanon.
On Sept. 5, the cabinet adopted a more detailed five-phase plan for imposing the state monopoly on arms – starting in the south and gradually moving north and east, the security sources and the second Lebanese official said.
The army said it would clear the south by December, without committing to a timeline for the rest of the country. The government has said the plan is contingent on Israel halting air strikes that have continued despite the ceasefire. All the sources said the army would have to navigate treacherous political terrain to achieve full disarmament.
Ed Gabriel, who heads Washington-based non-profit the American Task Force Lebanon and met with Lebanon’s military and political leaders in October, said the army‘s cautious approach reflected the possibility of civilian strife if it moved too fast outside of the south.
“It’s a Lebanese answer to disarmament,” he said.
Hezbollah has not opposed the seizures of unmanned weapons caches in the south and has not fired on Israel since the November truce. However, it has publicly refused to relinquish its weapons elsewhere, hinting conflict was possible if the state moved against the Islamist group.
Moving north and east without a political consensus risks confrontation with Hezbollah fighters or street protests by Lebanon’s Shi’ite community, among whom Hezbollah remains popular, the two security sources and the second Lebanese official said.
In a written statement to Reuters, Hezbollah‘s media office said the ceasefire meant Lebanon’s army was fully responsible for the zone south of the Litani River, referring to the water body that crosses southern Lebanon near Israel.
But any disarmament efforts north of the river would require political consensus, it said.
“The rest – that depends on a political settlement, which we don’t yet have. The army is betting on time,” said a Lebanese official close to the group.
The army still fears a stand-off with Hezbollah‘s constituency could again fracture the army, which split during Lebanon’s 15-year civil war, one Lebanese official told Reuters.
In a speech on Sunday, Hezbollah secretary general Naim Qassem described the army‘s approach as good and balanced but also issued a warning, saying he hoped the army was not considering clashing with the Shi’ite community.
The media offices of the Lebanese army, cabinet, and presidency did not respond to questions from Reuters for this story. The Israeli military did not respond to requests for comment.
MULTIPLE WEAPONS CACHES FOUND AND DESTROYED
The army does not possess its own information on where Hezbollah‘s stockpiles are located, two security sources told Reuters. It has relied on intelligence supplied by Israel to “the Mechanism,” the sources said, referring to a committee established by the truce deal, chaired by the US and including France, Israel, Lebanon, and UN peacekeepers.
In late May, the army was receiving so many reports from the Mechanism that it could not keep pace with the requests for inspections, the two sources said.
If troops found a depot, they kept any ammunition or new equipment compatible with their own arms and destroyed rockets, launchers, and other material, the two sources said.
Operations in the south by the UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL yielded tunnels dozens of meters long and unexploded ordnance, according to UNIFIL statements.
The army depleted its explosives stocks by June. In August, six army troops were killed trying to dismantle an arms depot. Reuters could not determine additional details of the circumstances of the accident.
The US is keen to help: in September, it announced $14 million in demolition charges and other aid to help Lebanese troops “degrade Hezbollah” and approved $192 million aid to the army the day before the US government shutdown.
The US also approved $192 million aid to the Lebanese army the day before the US government shutdown.
US Senator Jeanne Shaheen advocated for the aid after a visit to south Lebanon in August left her impressed with the army‘s efforts and convinced it needed more support, an aide in her office told Reuters.
It could still take months for the detonation charges to be delivered Lebanon, a source familiar with the process said.
WILL THEY, WON’T THEY
In recent months, Hezbollah‘s position about the future of its weapons has appeared fluid. In public statements, the group warned the state against trying to seize its arsenal – but also said it would be willing to discuss the fate of its arms if Israel commits to a real ceasefire.
In private, some representatives of the group have floated the possibility that progress could be made elsewhere if reconstruction allowed Shi’ite constituents to return to villages and towns destroyed in the war, the Lebanese official close to the group said. Others have flatly rejected decommissioning its weapons under any circumstances.
The group is still conducting internal discussions on the future of its arsenal and is also playing for time, the Lebanese official close to Hezbollah and a Lebanese political source said.
In its written statement, Hezbollah said the status of its weapons depended on an end to the Israeli aggression, its withdrawal from the occupied Lebanese territories, the return of prisoners, and ensuring reconstruction.
NEXT STEPS POSE CHALLENGE
The security sources say that a lack of information makes it difficult for the army to estimate what exactly Hezbollah has stored, and where, including in the eastern Bekaa – a vast plain where Hezbollah is thought to store the bulk of its long-range missiles and other strategic arms.
Israel provided some reports of weapons in areas north of the Litani but the army deemed them too sensitive to act on without a consensus on whether and how to disarm Hezbollah there, one of the security sources and one of the diplomats based in Lebanon said
Despite providing intelligence on weapons locations, Israel is proving another obstacle in the south, the officials briefed on the cabinet meeting said.
Several soldiers have been wounded by Israeli fire while on inspection missions, the two security sources said. Israeli drones have dropped grenades near soldiers and UN peacekeepers in the south, UNIFIL has said.
The army has also warned that Israel’s occupation of five hilltops within Lebanon near the border with Israel could delay a full sweep of the area, the two security sources said.
And when Lebanese troops tried to erect a rudimentary watch-tower to monitor the border, Israel objected, the two security sources said. The tower remains unmanned.
The Israeli military did not respond to questions about the wounded Lebanese troops and the abandoned watchtower.
Washington is keen to see Lebanon expedite disarmament in the rest of the country after meeting the year-end deadline for the south, the congressional aide said. US envoy Tom Barrack has warned of possible Israeli action if that deadline is not met.
“The US sees that Lebanon needs to do more, and faster,” Gabriel said.
The United States fully supports Lebanon’s “courageous and historic decision to disarm Hezbollah,” a US State Department spokesperson said in response to Reuters questions.
“The region and the world are watching carefully,” the spokesperson said.
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Israeli-Arab influencer behind ‘Nas Daily’: Anti-Zionism is antisemitism
(JTA) — DENVER – Israeli-Arab social media entrepreneur Nuseir Yassin, of the viral vlog “Nas Daily,” said he believes “anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism” and stressed his commitment to overturning “misguided hate” against Jews, at a conference devoted to the subject this week.
Yassin, 34, was speaking with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on the sidelines of the conference, hosted by the David Merage Foundation for Confronting Antisemitism. A self-described “village boy” from the Lower Galilee town of Arraba in Israel, he achieved massive success through viral short-form videos that attracted viewers from all over the world. Today he boasts more than 68 million followers across numerous social networks.
Yassin is a Muslim of Palestinian origin, although he said he is not religious. Asked why it was important for a non-Jewish person to participate in a conference about combatting antisemitism, Yassin equated this battle to fighting for his family, noting that “the success of Israel and the Jewish people is also my success as an Israeli citizen.”
“I’m not a fan of the Israeli government, and I’m not here to defend it, just like I’m not a fan of many governments,” Yassin noted, but he asserted that the reaction to the government “is absolutely fueled by antisemitism.”
“I do believe anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism,” he added.
He said he views Zionism as “the most vanilla thing in the world – a group of people wanting a place to live,” and has therefore concluded that Israel’s detractors “just really don’t like Jews.”
Yassin, who first broke through in 2016, has become increasingly outspoken in recent years about his combined Israeli and Palestinian identity. During the conference, he recalled that he grew up labeling himself Arab-Israeli. After the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, he started listing Israeli first and Palestinian second.
“I could not relate to the extremism that I saw, and I wanted to distance myself from it without erasing my identity connected to it,” Yassin said. “I’m not just Israeli because I think it removes a little bit of spice, but I’m also not just Palestinian anymore.”
“A lot of Israeli culture is inside me,” he continued. “I never agree with people. I’m always disagreeable. That’s Israeli. I speak up.”
Yassin noted that he was “the first guy to go study in the United States out of my entire lineage,” graduating from Harvard University in 2014 with a degree in economics and a minor in computer science. Despite having grown up in Israel, Yassin said that Harvard was the place where he made his first Jewish friend.
After working as a software developer for Venmo in New York, Yassin left his job in 2016 to travel and document his journeys. Ultimately, he launched a Facebook page called Nas Daily – using the word for “people” in Arabic – where he posted one-minute videos for 1,000 days, telling the stories of communities around the world.
What was once a personal brand has since expanded into the parent Nas Company, which offers platforms for solo entrepreneurs to build and monetize their online businesses.
Yassin earned an honorary degree from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2025 in recognition of his advocacy work for Israeli and Palestinian coexistence. This past August, he also joined the advisory board for the Genesis Prize Foundation, which each year celebrates inspiring Jewish individuals for their achievements.
“I do not relate to hundreds of men on the street shouting ‘Allahu Akbar,’” Yassin told JTA, adding that there needed to be more women and fewer religious fanatics participating in the Israeli-Palestinian conversation.
Yassin argued that he’s “not a weird Arab for saying this” and that “the entire country of the UAE says the same thing,” referring to one of the Gulf countries that signed onto the Abraham Accords normalizing relations with Israel. He also challenged “Free Palestine” activists to envision a concrete future for Palestinians rather than fixating on Israel’s transgressions.
“We should all be ‘Free Palestine’ – but from what?” Yassin asked. “We disagree on the solution, not on the problem. We don’t want suffering. Nobody wants suffering.”
“I’m a free-Palestine-from-Hamas guy,” he continued. “Just free Palestine,” he said, ”is not an answer. I’m free-Palestine-from-extremism.”
Yassin affirmed that there is room for criticism of Israel’s government, noting, for example, that he would like to see an Israeli-Arab presence in the government.
But he marveled at the notion that an alien visiting Earth would likely guess that the most hated country in the United Nations is North Korea, when in fact “It’s not – It’s Israel.”
That struck him as absurd because “the Israel-Palestine conflict is not a big deal when you compare it to everything else that’s happening on planet Earth. The only thing that makes it a big deal is that we, as Palestinians, have the perfect enemy.”
That enemy, he continued, is “the most hated type of enemy, which is the Jews.”
As part of his appearance at the conference, Yassin presented a recap of a fellowship he launched this past spring in partnership with the David Merage Foundation to help 50 content creators – 25 Jewish and 25 Muslim – produce meaningful material.
Participants received $1,000 and spent a month learning from the Nas Daily team about viral and impactful storytelling during the fellowship, named for Yassin’s first Jewish friend, Zaki Djemal, who recently died of a sudden heart attack.
To Laura Merage, the Iranian-born Jewish co-founder of the foundation, Yassin was a natural partner for this bridge-building effort. Given his social media following and “infectious personality,” Merage said she felt “that’s what we need more of in the world.”
At the conference on Tuesday, Yassin announced two winners of the fellowship’s influencer competition: recent McGill University graduate Raihaana Adira, a Canadian Muslim, and Grace, a Jewish-American digital content creator who preferred to use only her first name for privacy reasons. Grace tells stories about unique public figures, such as the first Arab “Miss Israel.” Adira, meanwhile, began posting about antisemitism and Muslim-Jewish relations after witnessing anti-Zionist protests at McGill.
“When I see a Jewish person being attacked on campus or online, it feels like I’m watching someone from my own community hurt,” Adira told JTA, noting that she started posting because no one believed her when she talked about incidents on campus.
“I wanted the protests and the graffiti on the walls that said ‘Death to the IDF’ to be seen,” she continued. “I am a Canadian, I am a Muslim, and when people at school on the streets say, ‘Death to Canada, We are Hamas, Hamas is heroic’ – that is not me.”
Adira said she received many death threats when she first started posting. While acknowledging how difficult that was, she also emphasized an influx of support that has helped “drown out the hate.”
Yassin offered a similar perspective, noting that at the beginning of his career, he “used to amplify the blowback and talk a lot about it,” referring to the criticisms he’d receive for promoting coexistence and calling out antisemitism. But after realizing that this deterred others from speaking out, he deemed the threats insignificant, calling them “the smallest price to pay for the largest outcome you can possibly imagine.”
During his travels around the world, Yassin said he has witnessed how flawed people’s perceptions of Jews can be and that he feels “a responsibility to set the record straight.” He also noted that he is dating a Jewish woman, author and influencer Aija Mayrock, whom he is marrying next year and with whom he expects to have children.
“They’re going to be Jewish, so that’s my family – literally, my family,” Yassin said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israeli-Arab influencer behind ‘Nas Daily’: Anti-Zionism is antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.
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Four Seats or No Seats? Why Israel’s Final Polls Disagree Over Amcha Yisrael
Conflicting projections for Ofer Winter’s party illustrate the uncertainty of measuring public support near an electoral threshold.
A Channel 12 poll gives Ofer Winter’s Amcha Yisrael four parliamentary seats.
An i24NEWS survey reaches the same seat total.
Other final polls find that the party does not qualify for representation.
How can surveys conducted close to the same election produce such different results?
The answer lies partly in the difference between measuring a vote share and converting it into parliamentary seats.
A Statistical Boundary
Israel’s electoral threshold is 3.25 percent.
For a party receiving substantially more than that percentage, modest sampling fluctuations may change its expected number of seats without calling its parliamentary presence into question.
For a party whose support lies near 3.25 percent, the same type of fluctuation may change its projected representation from several seats to zero.
This does not necessarily mean the polls are measuring completely different political realities.
They may be producing estimates close to the same threshold but on opposite sides of it.
Sample Size Is Only One Factor
The i24NEWS survey conducted on October 22 included 5,124 adult respondents and reported a sampling error of plus or minus 1.4 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.
That is a substantial sample by conventional political polling standards.
But a larger sample does not eliminate every source of uncertainty.
Different pollsters may employ different recruitment methods, weighting systems and procedures for estimating turnout.
They may also differ in how they handle respondents who are undecided or reluctant to state their preferences.
These choices can matter particularly for smaller parties.
The Problem of Turnout
Opinion polls generally estimate voting preferences before actual voting takes place.
Election results reflect the ballots cast by people who participate.
Differences between intended and actual turnout can affect parties in different ways.
Analysts must therefore consider not only how many respondents express support for a party, but also whether the poll’s turnout model accurately reflects the eventual electorate.
Without transparent, comparable information about the methods used by each polling organization, it is difficult to identify which methodological difference is responsible for a particular disagreement.
Reading the Final Surveys
The appropriate interpretation of Amcha Yisrael’s polling is neither that its parliamentary representation is guaranteed nor that exclusion is certain.
The available surveys demonstrate uncertainty around a legally decisive boundary.
The four-seat projections reported by Channel 12 and i24NEWS are meaningful observations.
So are the below-threshold findings published by Channel 13, Maariv and Zman Yisrael.
Each survey is a measurement of electoral intentions under a particular methodology, not a count of actual votes.
For readers following Israel’s election, this makes Amcha Yisrael an instructive case study in how polling uncertainty interacts with electoral law.
The final result will provide the definitive seat allocation. The polls explain why the outcome was difficult to measure in advance.
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As Trump betrays Ukraine, it’s beginning to feel a lot like Munich
In Munich on Sept. 30, 1938, the leaders of Britain and France signed an agreement with Adolf Hitler that caved to the Nazi leader’s demand that Germany be given a chunk of Czechoslovakia. Five months later, Hitler ordered the German military to forcibly take the remainder of the neighboring country.
On Oct. 9, 2026, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin struck a deal allowing Russia to sell diesel fuel to global markets, most importantly to the US. Then Trump waived a package of sanctions on Russia that had been passed by Congress. By replenishing Russia’s war coffers, it is likely more Ukrainians will die because of these twin gifts from America’s president to the warmongering Russian autocrat.
Why is Trump doing this? He seems to be hoping the diesel deal will help him avert disaster in the upcoming midterms. Or maybe there’s more to it than that. Perhaps Trump seriously thinks that this will get him the Nobel Peace Prize by ending the war in Ukraine through helping Putin win it. Perhaps it’s one more scheme to further enrich himself and his family. Or maybe Putin really does have something on Trump.
In any event, it feels like Munich all over again.
There are some remarkable parallels between Czechoslovakia’s predicament in 1938 and Ukraine’s nine decades later: separatists in two vulnerable Central European democracies were encouraged and supported by a neighboring authoritarian regime that sought to seize adjacent territory under the pretext of protecting a minority from oppression.
And at the center of both narratives is betrayal: of Czechoslovakia by Britain and France, and Ukraine by Trump.
In the spring and summer of 1938, Konrad Henlein, leader of the Nazi-allied Sudeten German Party in Czechoslovakia, held secret meetings with Hitler and other Nazi officials. They concocted a plan: Cause so much disorder in the Sudetenland that the Czech government would declare martial law, thus creating an excuse for German troops to march in to protect the ethnic German minority.
Tensions that had long existed along the Czech frontier erupted into gunfire and death in the Sudeten town of Habersbirk on the morning of Sept. 13, 1938. A mob of German separatists hung a swastika banner from a church tower, stormed the police station, kidnapped the wife of a cop, and engaged in gunfights with police officers that lasted hours. Four Czech police officers and four insurgents died. Outbreaks of violence, terror and torture raged along the border for days, backed by Freikorps paramilitary troops who crossed from Germany and by SA and SS men who took part in cross-border sabotage and armed attacks.
The uprising had the desired impact. Just 17 days later — on Sept. 30, 1938 — Britain, France, Italy and Nazi Germany signed the Munich Agreement, yielding to Hitler’s demand that the Sudetenland be ceded to him. After landing at an airport outside London, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain waved a document in his hand and jubilantly proclaimed:
“The settlement of the Czechoslovak problem which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace.”
“I believe it is peace for our time,” Chamberlain said later that day.
But it didn’t take long for Hitler to show he could not be trusted. Hitler’s army marched into Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939. Germany’s invasion of Poland followed less than six months later, and by 1942 German forces controlled territory spanning from the Atlantic Ocean to deep inside the Soviet Union.
Ethnic Germans’ uprising in Czechoslovakia in 1938 found an echo nine decades later in Ukraine’s Donbas region, where unrest that began with pro-Russia protests in 2014 evolved into the war Russia has been waging on its neighbor for nearly five years.
In the spring of 2014, paramilitary units led by Russian intelligence officers stormed government office buildings in several towns and cities in Donbas, seizing weapons and clashing with police. In a scene reminiscent of the Habersbirk siege of 1938, on April 14, 2014, pro-Russian militants seized the police station in Horlivka, beat up the police chief, and murdered a member of the city council, whose body was found in a river. Similar clashes occurred throughout Donbas.
Two Kremlin-backed pseudo-states soon emerged: the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic. Russia funneled tanks, artillery, air defense systems and fighters into Donbas, fueling a war between separatists and Ukrainian forces that dragged on for years.
Like Hitler in the Sudetenland, Russia’s de facto occupation of Donbas was not enough for Vladimir Putin. His eyes were on all of Ukraine, and he spent years manufacturing pretexts for the full-scale invasion that began on Feb. 24, 2022.
Trump has been buttering up Putin for more than a decade, starting with his 2015 campaign for president, when he effusively praised the ruthless Russian autocrat’s leadership style. Putin is a “strong leader,” is “far more respected than our president,” meaning the immensely popular Barack Obama, and was someone he “would get along with very well,” Trump said back then.
Trump’s admiration for Putin took on ominous tones after becoming president. During a press conference after the two leaders’ 2018 Helsinki summit, Trump questioned intelligence findings on Russian election interference and said he believed Putin’s denial. “I don’t see any reason it would be Russia,” Trump told reporters, with the Russian strongman standing at his side.
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, during Biden’s presidency, Trump called it “a pretty smart move,” praised Putin as a “genius,” and also said it wouldn’t have happened if Trump was still president, remarks that were amplified by Russian state media.
During Trump’s second term, his buddy-buddy relationship with Putin has turned into a virtual strategic alliance, as the American president repeatedly makes moves and statements that seem designed to please the Russian autocrat. There are Trump’s threats to abandon NATO, his humiliation of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky during a February 2025 meeting inside the Oval Office, and most recently Trump’s demand that Ukraine cease its drone attacks on Russian oil refineries, his call for Zelensky’s ouster, and envoy Steve Witkoff thanking Putin for being a “humanitarian.”
Putin has proposed a summit between himself, Trump, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to discuss ending the war in Ukraine. It’s notable that Ukraine has not been invited. This is also what happened in Munich nine decades ago, when Czech delegates were excluded from the room, and others decided Czechoslovakia’s fate.
Last October, aboard Air Force One, Trump told reporters the Donbas region should be “cut up,” leaving most of it in Russian hands.
“Let it be cut the way it is,” he said. “They can negotiate something later on down the line.”
It seems the fate Trump envisions for Ukraine is similar to the one Hitler envisioned for Czechoslovakia. It would be naïve to think that Putin’s expansionist ambitions would stop there.
The post As Trump betrays Ukraine, it’s beginning to feel a lot like Munich appeared first on The Forward.
