Nasrallah on the Pigeon Rocks

In recent weeks, a dispute over the Pigeon Rocks in Beirut has been making headlines. At stake is much more than the misuse of the famous rocks lying off the coast of Lebanon's capital. Namely: the sovereignty of the Lebanese state.

On 25 September, Hezbollah marked the first anniversary of the deaths of Hassan Nasrallah and his successor Hashem Safieddine by projecting their portraits onto the Pigeon Rocks. Nasrallah, the party's long-time secretary general, was killed in an Israeli air strike at the end of September 2024; Safieddine was killed a few days later. 

Lebanon's Prime Minister, Nawaf Salam, had banned the video projection onto the national landmark. When Hezbollah ignored that ban, Salam's response was to arrest those allegedly responsible for the show of force and launch an investigation.

The daily newspaper an-Nahar commented that Hezbollah's defiance of the ban, and its use of a symbolic location in the heart of Beirut, a city which lies outside the party's sphere of influence, must be considered a deliberate provocation, a way of demonstrating that it can do what it wants in Lebanon.

This dispute took place against the backdrop of a far more important debate over the disarmament of Hezbollah agreed on as part of the ceasefire agreement with Israel in November 2024. On 5 September 2025, the Lebanese government approved an army plan to gradually confiscate and destroy Hezbollah's weapons countrywide.

The action at Pigeon Rocks can be viewed as a defiant response to that plan. As a an article in an-Nahar asks:

"In Lebanon, which suffers from the weakness of the state and the erosion of its institutions, any attempt to restore the [state's] monopoly on weapons appears to be a delicate turning point, especially since the greatest challenge is posed by an armed organisation which opposes even the most insignificant government decision, as in the case of Pigeon Rocks. What if the decisions are on a completely different scale and concern the confiscation of weapons?"

For Sami Gemayel, head of the Christian Kataeb party, one thing is clear: "The question today is whether there's a [Lebanese] state or not. Will Hezbollah accept the state's conditions or continue to defy them? Our struggle is about disarmament, not about illuminating the Raouche Rocks [the Pigeon Rocks]." 

Shebaa Farms as justification for armed resistance

The question of whether Hezbollah can retain its weapons or not has preoccupied Lebanese politics for decades. After the end of the civil war (1975–90), Hezbollah was granted special rights in the so-called Taif Agreement. While all other militias were to be disarmed, Hezbollah was allowed to keep its weapons in order to resist the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.

After the Israeli army's withdrawal in 2000, Hezbollah maintained its special role, citing the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms in the border area between Israel, Lebanon and Syria.

Although the area, covering around 22 square kilometres and located in the Golan Heights, was administered by Syria before Israel's annexation in 1981, the Assad regime never disputed Hezbollah's claim that the land belonged to Lebanon. Israel's annexation, which was not internationally recognised, served as justification for the continuation of Hezbollah's armed struggle.

This illustrates the paradoxical conditions of Hezbollah's existence. To justify the resistance (Arabic: muqawama), it needs Israel as an enemy and must continually remind the Lebanese people of the danger posed by its neighbour.

Electoral successes following June 2006 war

In the summer of 2006, the strategy paid off. Hezbollah provoked an Israeli military intervention by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers and killing three others. Up to 1,300 Lebanese died in the retaliatory strikes by the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces), and nearly a million were temporarily displaced.

Despite the devastation caused by the war, Hezbollah claimed it as a victory. A few weeks after the war ended, it announced it would not surrender its weapons, as stipulated in UN Resolution 1701 (2006). This allowed it to portray itself as invincible; in the years that followed, Hezbollah enjoyed increased approval ratings and electoral successes.

Presumably, Hezbollah was intent on a similar strategy after 7 October 2023, when it began firing rockets at Israel, ostensibly in solidarity with the Palestinians. None of the missiles helped a single Palestinian; meanwhile, Israel's retaliatory strikes were entirely predictable. Only the scale of the Israeli attacks on the south of the country, the southern suburbs of Beirut, and other Shiite-populated regions exceeded all predictions.

Political pressure at home

The Israeli attacks killed Hezbollah's brightest minds and its entire military leadership. The new secretary general, Naim Qassem, is not in the same league as Nasrallah. He is less charismatic, less rhetorically gifted, and is considered to be more dependent on Tehran. In addition, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024 weakened Hezbollah.

For years, Assad had supported Hezbollah with arms shipments and by exerting political pressure in its favour, such as during elections for the Lebanese president. In return, Hezbollah sent fighters to Syria to crush uprisings against the regime until the war against Israel depleted Hezbollah's forces.

In December 2024, Syria's new leader, Sunni Ahmad al-Sharaa, announced that he would not intervene in the Lebanese presidential elections. After three years of internal power struggles over the Lebanese presidency, the Hezbollah-backed candidate withdrew, and the party announced it would not veto the election of the opposing candidate.

This allowed parliament to elect Joseph Aoun as president on 9 January 2025, and a new prime minister, Nawaf Salam, a few days later. Both are seen as beacons of hope for the economically weak and war-torn country. Their success will be measured, to some degree, by whether or not they succeed in disarming Hezbollah.

Israeli violations of the ceasefire

"We will not give up the weapons that protect us (...) from our enemy," Hezbollah Secretary General Naim Qassem announced on 25 August. "If this government continues in its current form, it cannot be trusted to protect Lebanon's sovereignty."

That sovereignty is currently being challenged by the ongoing violations of the ceasefire agreement by the Israeli army, the occupation of numerous villages in the border region and by the almost daily presence of Israeli drones circling Beirut and other areas.

The continued attacks by the IDF on civilian infrastructure also play into the hands of Hezbollah. Israel appears to be deliberately preventing the reconstruction and return of the tens of thousands of internally displaced persons to their home villages in southern Lebanon. As long as Israel poses a concrete threat to the Lebanese people, there will be a desire for a protective hand, particularly in the hardest-hit Shiite areas.

Yet Hezbollah itself has systematically undermined the sovereignty of the Lebanese state with its army, its security apparatus and its sabotage of democratic processes in recent decades. It thrives in the fertile soil of a weak state, promising to compensate for state deficits, particularly in military defence. 

Weapons depots destroyed

In October, it was reported that the Lebanese army was actively destroying Hezbollah's stockpiled weapons. These depots were located with the help of information from Israeli intelligence. According to Reuters, the scale of the destruction was such that supplies of explosives were running low and demolitions had to be paused. 

While it remains unclear whether or not the Lebanese government will succeed in enforcing a state monopoly on arms, the likelihood of success has never been greater since the end of the civil war 35 years ago. 

As Lebanese MP Waddah Sadek, a member of the Khatt Ahmar (Red Line) reform alliance, commented regarding the dispute over the Pigeon Rocks: "If [Hezbollah's] narrative shifts from the destruction of Israel to the projection of an image on the rocks of Raouche, while Israel continues its daily attacks and murders, the party is facing a political leadership crisis and must rethink its calculations."

Following this logic, the dispute over the memorial event at Pigeon Rocks could be interpreted as a rearguard action by a weakened Hezbollah.

This is an edited translation of the German original. Translated by Louise East.