Plumes of smoke can be seen for miles in Beirut as drones humming above terrify the inhabitants and force them to seek cover. Hospitals are overwhelmed, and a major ground invasion by Israel appears imminent. A country already mired in myriad crises is living through its worst nightmare. But its national military is remaining on the sidelines.
The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) face a unique, unenviable quandary: whether to participate in a war that engulfs their homeland. The LAF’s absence on the front line could be interpreted by some Lebanese citizens as dereliction of duty. Meanwhile, participation would mean backing Hezbollah in the war, which could threaten the LAF’s own relationship with its benefactors in the West.
Several sources, including Lebanese and Western military officials as well as local politicians and notables, told Foreign Policy that the LAF will likely stay out of the war as long as it can. The overarching sentiment seems to be that this isn’t a war that the LAF has the capabilities to win—or even to credibly participate in.
At least half a dozen non-Shiite Lebanese stakeholders told Foreign Policy that the conflict is between the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah, the Shiite militia force that operates as a parallel military, and not with the state of Lebanon. These sources argued that the LAF shouldn’t be expected to intervene, especially since it is expected to remain neutral and keep peace between different communities at home.
“They are historically in a posture for internal stability,” said a Western military trainer based in Lebanon who spoke on the condition of anonymity, “rather than a conventional defensive posture; not because they shouldn’t be, and not because they lack courage or will, which they have both in abundance, but because of the internal political settlement and the type of support granted to them.”
The LAF has historically stayed out of conflicts with Israel, since it lags far behind militarily in comparison. Military assessment organization Global Firepower ranks Lebanon at 118 out of 145 countries in terms of strength, while the IDF is among the organization’s list of the 20 most powerful armed forces in the world. Lebanon does not have any fighter jets and possesses only outdated tanks. It has a little more than 70,000 active troops—with many of those doing two or three jobs. Israel, in comparison, has 170,000 active-duty personnel and between 300,000 and 400,000 soldiers in reserve, as well as state-of-the-art fighter planes, tanks, and defense systems.
Being vastly outmanned and outgunned by the IDF is just one part of the problem. The LAF faces a number of existential dilemmas as it considers the extent of its involvement in the developing war.
If it fights alongside Hezbollah, the LAF could be seen to be aiding a group whose military wing is proscribed as a terrorist organization by various Western governments. The United States has spent more than $3 billion on the LAF since 2006 and even made contributions toward its salaries as an economic crisis hit the nation in recent years. (According to the World Bank, by February last year, the Lebanese pound had lost “more than 98 percent of its pre-crisis value.”) Experts say the LAF may find it difficult to use U.S.-sponsored equipment against Israel—a key ally of Washington.
Firas Maksad, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said the LAF needs to keep in mind the support that it gets from the United States as it considers engaging against Israel. “The LAF has a delicate balance to strike between maintaining and reinforcing its role as the only legitimate defender of Lebanon” rather than ceding that role to Hezbollah, he said, and it must also factor in its dependence on U.S. aid as it moves forward.
Hezbollah has long built a narrative that it is necessary to repel Israeli attacks on Lebanese sovereignty and has accused the West of deliberately keeping the LAF weak. It hasn’t projected itself as competition to the LAF but rather as brothers in arms, an ally, chanting its mantra: “the people, the army, and the resistance.”
But many believe that the group exploited Israeli invasions in 1982 and 2006 to expand its influence in Lebanon. Over the years, Hezbollah has used its weapons—which it has kept, even as all other sect-based militias gave theirs up—to effectively hold the LAF to ransom. At the height of civil unrest in 2019, a senior Lebanese general spoke to Foreign Policy on the condition of anonymity and said that if the army challenged Hezbollah, it could lead to a civil war.
Now as Hezbollah’s leaders are assassinated and its bastions are bombed, some in the country are secretly hoping that the conflict could usher in a more equitable distribution of power.
Israel’s attacks across south Lebanon and a southern suburb of Beirut, Dahiyeh, have displaced an estimated 1.2 million Lebanese, mostly Shiites, and begun to upset a deliberate separation of sects from one neighborhood to another. People are afraid to let too many Shiites take shelter in or near their homes lest they become Israeli targets. They also wish to maintain a demographic advantage in their localities in their favor.
As the displaced Shiites seek refuge wherever they can and “start squatting in empty properties,” said Joost Hiltermann, a program director for the Middle East at the International Crisis Group, “owners won’t look kindly on that. They don’t want to become targets.”
There have been previous incidents of communities pushing out Hezbollah members from their villages to avoid being the subjects of Israeli retaliation. For instance, in August 2021, residents in the primarily Druze town of Chouaya briefly impounded a Hezbollah truck to stop the fighters from launching a rocket attack against Israel.
The LAF is expected to play a role after the conflict instead, including by going between communities to facilitate or enforce whatever agreement ends the war.
Experts said that if the conflict prolongs, it could deepen the existing fault lines in a country that’s already reeling under a debilitating economic crisis and major deprivations. Since the LAF is seen as the only nonpartisan institution in Lebanon and is respected by people across the religious spectrum, it is the only actor that can possibly mediate between sects in the case of tensions between them. In order to fulfill that role, the LAF must remain neutral and refrain from backing Hezbollah in the war.
“The talk of civil war as such has risen a little, but people are acting very wisely so far,” Alain Aoun, a member of Lebanese parliament, told Foreign Policy. “But you cannot be sure, and it really depends on the behavior of all political parties after the war.”
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, has offered to deploy the LAF along the Blue Line—the de facto border between Israel and Lebanon—and implement United Nations Resolution 1701, which calls for Hezbollah to move farther away from that border, at least to the Litani River. However, that may only happen if Hezbollah either agrees to withdraw or is vanquished on the battlefield—or if Israel changes tack and gives consent to a cease-fire.
How the LAF plays its cards during the war will probably also have an impact on the political future of Lebanon. Joseph Aoun, the commander in chief of the Lebanese military and a Maronite Christian, is the top pick among anti-Hezbollah factions to become president.
Michael Young, a senior editor at the Carnegie Endowment’s Middle East Center, posted on X in late September that, in the aftermath of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah’s assassination, the country could turn “to the sole national institution still functioning, namely Lebanon’s army, and push for the election of Joseph Aoun. Why? Because the army will play a key role in maintaining stability in the country, and a key role in security arrangements for the south.”
The IDF and Hezbollah have exchanged fire over the past year, but the LAF claims that it has only responded once. “A soldier was killed after the Israeli enemy targeted an army post in the Bint Jbeil area” in southern Lebanon, “and the personnel at the post responded to the sources of fire,” the army said in a statement on Oct. 3.
The LAF’s red lines for participating directly in the war so far appear to be an attack on its military positions along with a full-fledged invasion and occupation of Lebanon. But a lot would depend on the ferocity of Israeli attacks and whether its military campaign further galvanizes Lebanon’s national pride.