Salam: We don't want civil war but we're committed to extending state authority

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has told the Wall Street Journal that the Lebanese government has achieved 80% of its objectives in taking control of country’s south.

The November 2024 ceasefire ended more than a year of fighting, including some two months of open war, between Israel and Hezbollah.

“All over the Lebanese territory, the state should have a monopoly on arms,” Salam added, reportedly banging his fists on a table. “We don’t want to put the country onto a civil-war track, but believe me, this is not going to affect our commitment to the need to extend and consolidate the authority of the state,” he said.

Israeli intelligence, delivered to the Lebanese via the U.S., helped locate remaining Hezbollah caches and posts in the south, unidentified senior Arab officials told the newspaper. Some of the weapons were destroyed, others were kept for the army’s own use.

Though the ceasefire agreement focuses on dismantling Hezbollah south of the Litani River, the report said that Salam and the U.S. are pushing for the same disarmament of the group across the rest of the country.

However, the group has insisted it needs to retain some arms, with Hezbollah lawmaker Ibrahim al-Moussawi telling the Wall Street Journal that “Hezbollah arms that continue to exist in certain parts are points of strength of Lebanon.”

Senior officials in Hezbollah and the government are concerned about the possibility of internal Lebanese clashes, though Salam said he is determined to see the disarmament through.

“We don’t want to put the country onto a civil-war track, but believe me, this is not going to affect our commitment to the need to extend and consolidate the authority of the state,” he said.

During the ongoing ceasefire in Lebanon, the Israeli army has continued to strike Hezbollah operatives and sites it says violate the understandings between Israel and Lebanon. More than 150 Hezbollah operatives have been reportedly killed since the start of the ceasefire.

Under the terms of the deal, Israel was obligated to withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon under the ceasefire. It pulled out from all but five so-called “strategic” posts located several hundred meters inside Lebanon, which it says are necessary to defend Israeli communities.