A specious argument fueled by DC-based Lebanese activists is gaining traction. It alleges that UN Security Council Resolution 1559 (2004) takes a stronger stance against Hezbollah than its successor, Resolution 1701, adopted after the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War. This argument most commonly rests on two alleged proofs. The first is that Resolution 1701’s Operative Paragraph 3 (OP3) allegedly makes disarming Hezbollah discretionary by leaving the matter of independent “weapons” up to “the consent of the Government of Lebanon.”
This gives room for Hezbollah, the argument goes, to join the Lebanese Government and pressure it into providing consent to the group’s arms, thus circumventing Resolution 1701’s disarmament requirement. The second prong of the argument rests on a partial reading of Resolution 1701’s Operative Paragraph (OP) 8, and a misinterpretation of its requirement to remove Hezbollah from Lebanese territory south of the Litani River. Requiring this condition only south of the Litani River, claims this argument, facilitates Hezbollah’s control over the rest of Lebanon—by allegedly releasing the group from confronting Israel and thus “directing its weapons inwards.” Better that Hezbollah’s weapons remain busy being pointed at Israel, these activists likely reason.
This entire argument, however, rests on misinterpretations of Resolution 1701’s meaning and intent and demonstrates ignorance of international law.
UN Security Council Resolution 1559
The Security Council adopted Resolution 1559 on September 2, 2004, under the UN Charter’s Chapter VI. In relevant part, Resolution 1559:
· “Reaffirms [the Council’s] call” for Lebanese territory to be “under the sole and exclusive authority of the Government of Lebanon throughout Lebanon” (OP1).
· “Calls for” disbanding and disarming all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias inside Lebanon (OP3).
· “Supports”—which generally leans towards being non-binding—the Government of Lebanon’s extension of its control over all Lebanese territory. This operative paragraph uses non-binding language (OP4).
Lebanon, then under the premiership of Rafic Hariri, officially rejected Resolution 1559 as a grave interference in its internal affairs. Hariri would later support 1559’s call for all foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon. Hezbollah also rejected the resolution, which gained more domestic significance after the group assassinated Hariri on February 14, 2005. Hezbollah then joined a Lebanese Cabinet for the first time in July of 2005, under the premiership of Fuad Siniora, to protect itself from any consequences of Resolution 1559.
Siniora was Hariri’s political successor as the head of the Future Movement, which was aligned with the umbrella March 14 Movement—variously described as sovereigntist, pro-Western, anti-Hezbollah, and anti-Syrian. Nevertheless, Siniora’s July 7, 2005, Cabinet Policy Statement lauded Hezbollah as Lebanon’s “youth and people who rose up for their country’s honor and liberated its South and the Western Beqaa…” The statement called for “preserving our brave resistance” and exploring “options to arrive at a militant/struggling [nidaliyya] Arab equation to confront Israel, its occupation, and greed and fortify Lebanon.” The Statement also stated the Siniora’s government “considers the Lebanese Resistance an honest and natural expression of the national right of the Lebanese people to liberate their land and defend their honor in the confrontation against Israeli aggression, threats, and greed, and to work towards finishing the liberation of Lebanese lands.”
The statement addressed Resolution 1559 obliquely, expressing Lebanon’s alleged “respect for international law […] and respect for international resolutions, through national sovereignty, solidarity, and unity.” This compliance, however, would be achieved “through a Lebanese internal dialogue that seeks to achieve a national consensus aiming to strengthen national unity, confirm the country’s supreme interests, and fortify Lebanon’s position and its credibility in the international community.” Historically, Lebanon’s preconditioning compliance with international obligations on consensus has been a code for inaction.
UN Security Council Resolution 1701
The Security Council adopted Resolution 1701 on August 11, 2006, to end the Second Lebanon War, “emphasizing the need to address urgently the causes that have given rise to the current crisis.” At Lebanon’s request, the Resolution did not explicitly mention its adoption under the UN Charter’s Chapter VII. The international community complied, likely as an act of grace to Siniora. Explicitly adopting Resolution 1701 under Chapter VII would have put Hezbollah on alert and domestically endangered Siniora’s government, and perhaps his life.
During the war, the United States and its partners expressly forbade any action—including by Israel—jeopardizing Siniora’s premiership. Believing him to be a credible interlocutor, they tailored the resolution’s language accordingly, to give Siniora sufficient maneuverability to deal with Hezbollah’s weapons according to Lebanon’s “special circumstances.”
In relevant part, Resolution 1701:
· “Calls upon” Lebanon and the United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL) to deploy their forces to the south (OP2).
· “Reiterates [the Council’s] strong support” for Lebanon’s independence and sovereignty “as contemplated by the Israeli-Lebanese General Armistice Agreement of 23 March 1949” (OP5).
· “Decides” that all states should impose an arms embargo upon Lebanon, except to the Government of Lebanon and UNIFIL (OP15).
· “Calls for” Lebanon and Israel to “support a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution” (OP8) based on:
— Fully respecting the Blue Line.
— Establishing security arrangements to prevent the resumption of hostilities, including the exclusive presence of LAF and UNIFIL between the Litani River and the Blue Line.
— “Full implementation of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and of resolutions 1559 (2004), and 1680 (2006), that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of 27 July 2006, there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese State [emphasis own].” This section of OP8 incorporates by reference the terms and obligations in the Taif Agreement —the quasi-constitutional document that ended Lebanon’s civil war—and the enumerated Security Council Resolutions. Resolution 1701 is thus meant to carry forward the obligations they contain, rather than to repudiate or replace them or those documents.
— No foreign forces in Lebanon “without the consent of the Government” or sale of weapons and related material “except as authorized by its Government.”
Resolution 1701’s purpose
Failing to explicitly invoke Chapter VII does not, alone, make Resolution 1701 or its terms merely exhortatory. Furthermore, ample textual evidence suggests that Resolution 1701, or at least some of its provisions, were adopted under the Charter’s Chapter VII—including the Council’s “determin[ation] that the situation in Lebanon constitutes a threat to international peace and security.”
Resolution 1701 also doesn’t create any new underlying obligations for Lebanon. Instead, it incorporates Israel’s and Lebanon’s preexisting, non-derogable obligations under customary international law and bilateral treaties. These underlying obligations require Lebanon to exercise vigilance against Hezbollah and take all feasible measures to restrain the group. That is because they absolutely prohibit Lebanon—notwithstanding its refusal to accept Israel’s existence or legitimacy— from employing any form or threat of coercion against Israel’s sovereignty, political independence, or territorial integrity, from promoting propaganda for wars of aggression against Israel, or allowing Hezbollah to use its territory to do so.
Resolution 1701, therefore, recalls Israel and Lebanon’s mutual obligation to “full[y] respect” and ensure “a permanent ceasefire” along the Blue Line “in its entirety” and “prevent any attacks” from crossing it—notwithstanding reservations regarding its course or the line not being an international border. Resolution 1701 does so by recalling Israel and Lebanon’s mutual obligations under the March 23, 1949 Lebanon-Israel General Armistice Agreement. That Armistice Agreement, among other matters, prohibits:
1. “Any element of the land, sea or air military or paramilitary forces of either Party, including non-regular forces,” from “commit[ing] any warlike or hostile act against the military or paramilitary forces of the other Party, or against civilians in territory under the control of that Party;”
2. Crossing the “Armistice Demarcation Line”—“the line beyond which the armed forces of the respective Parties shall not move”—by land, air, or sea “for any purpose whatsoever”
3. Any “warlike act or act of hostility [to] be conducted from territory controlled by one of the parties to this Agreement against the other party.”
Resolution 1701 “calls for” Lebanon to undertake certain measures necessary—indeed, indispensable—to fulfill these foregoing obligations, namely: 1) distancing Hezbollah north of the Litani River and deploying a sufficient number of LAF troops, alongside UNIFIL, to prevent its return; 2) to subsequently disarm the group; 3) and to secure its borders against the entry of unauthorized foreign forces, arms, or related materiel to prevent Hezbollah’s regeneration. The resolution also “decides”—in explicitly binding language—that the international community must also be part of this effort by enforcing an arms embargo on non-state actors in Lebanon.
That Resolution 1701 frames these measures as “calls for” action by Lebanon does not make them conclusive recommendations. The obligatory nature of Security Council “calls” for action is unclear, rather than unambiguously exhortatory or non–binding. In the International Court of Justice’s 1971 Namibia Advisory Opinion, the Court, dealing with a Security Council Resolution that “call[ed] upon” States to undertake certain tasks, noted:
It has also been contented that the relevant Security Council resolutions are couched in exhortatory rather than mandatory language, and that, therefore, they do not purport to impose any legal duty on any State nor to affect legally any right of any State. The language of a resolution of the Security Council should be carefully analyzed before a conclusion can be made as to its binding effect […] the question whether [the Security Council’s powers to mandate actions by States] have been in fact exercised is to be determined in each case, having regard to the terms of the resolution to be interpreted, the discussions leading to it, the Charter provisions invoked and, in general, all circumstances that might assist in determining the legal consequences of the resolution of the Security Council.
In other words, whether a “call for” action by a state is mandatory or a recommendation depends on the totality of the circumstances. Here, several factors lend themselves to interpreting OP8 as—per multiple UN secretaries-general—“obligations” to which Beirut “must fully adhere,” and therefore mandating action by Lebanon.
First, Resolution 1701 was the Council’s response to a breach of international peace and an act of aggression, namely Hezbollah’s July 12, 2006, attack on Israel that ignited the war. The Council, determining that the “situation in Lebanon constitutes a threat to international peace and security,” enumerated remedial measures designed to “address urgently the causes” that gave rise to the crisis. These causes were Hezbollah’s unfettered presence in south Lebanon, its private arsenal, and its access to an external resupply of materiel and fighters.
The Security Council’s recommended measures in OP8 are the “elements” without which the Council’s envisioned “permanent ceasefire and long-term solution” cannot be achieved. Furthermore, OP8’s measures stem from Lebanon’s underlying and preexisting binding obligations. Indeed, short of explicitly authorizing external or Israeli force, no other measures than the ones enumerated will suffice to fulfill these obligations, restrain and disarm Hezbollah, or achieve the Security Council’s explicitly desired outcome.
Finally, since Resolution 1701 only conditionally abrogated Israel’s right of self-defense against Hezbollah, the implicit consequences of Lebanon’s failure to implement Resolution 1701’s terms, actively tracked by the Council, would be a resumption of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah. Those repercussions are thus sufficiently severe to suggest that the measures intended to prevent the renewed outbreak of hostilities are mandatory and not exhortatory.
Lebanon’s idiosyncratic interpretation of Resolution 1701
Further lending to Resolution 1701’s binding nature, Lebanon’s Cabinet unanimously accepted the resolution and its terms on August 12, 2006. Lebanon also routinely reaffirms its commitment to Resolution 1701. Yet, it has failed to implement any of the measures set forth in the Resolution, including OP8, or its own August 7, 2006, decision to deploy 15,000 troops to south Lebanon.
Lebanon produces several unconvincing justifications for its inaction.
The first is an idiosyncratic interpretation of Resolution 1701’s term “armed groups.” Lebanon argues that since Hezbollah is a “resistance organization” and not an “armed group,” Resolution 1701’s terms don’t apply to it, and, therefore, Beirut need not restrain or disarm Hezbollah pursuant to the Resolution’s enumerated measures. This remains Lebanon’s interpretation, even as it calls for implementing Resolution 1701 amidst the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
This reading of Resolution 1701 parallels Lebanon’s interpretation of Paragraph C, Section III of the Taif Agreement—incorporated by reference into Operative Paragraph 8—to consider Hezbollah as but one of all the “necessary measures/procedures [kafat al-ijraat al-lazima] to liberate all Lebanese territory from Israeli occupation,” to exclude Hezbollah from the Paragraph A, Section II of the Agreement’s requirement to disband all “militias.” Hezbollah, Lebanon argues, is the country’s means of liberating the territory it alleges remains occupied by Israel.
This argument fails for two reasons.
First, accepting Lebanon’s bad-faith interpretations—of Resolution 1701 and the Taif Agreement—would gut those documents of meaning and impact. Resolution 1701 was adopted when Hezbollah was Lebanon’s last prominent armed group. Further, it was adopted in response to a war sparked by Hezbollah and to solve the problems caused by the group’s independent arsenal and unfettered military activities. Therefore, if Resolution 1701 wasn’t meant to address Hezbollah and its arms, it would have no purpose.
Additionally, in officially rejecting Resolution 1559, whose terms and obligations were incorporated by reference into 1701’s Operative Paragraph 8, Lebanon recognized that the resolution’s terms applied to Hezbollah. Finally, Lebanon’s interpretation could lead to a proliferation of armed groups in Lebanon claiming “resistance” exemptions.
Second, Lebanon is suggesting an interpretation of Resolution 1701 and the Taif Agreement that is illegal under international law, as well as Lebanon’s bilateral treaties with Israel. International law prohibits the use of force, even allegedly defensive force by a “resistance organization,” to settle territorial disputes. This is so even in cases where a state can assert a valid claim to a parcel of territory.
The Eritrea-Ethiopia Arbitration noted that this prohibition stems from “border disputes between States [being] so frequent that any exception to the prohibition of the threat or use of force for territory that is allegedly occupied unlawfully would create a large and dangerous hole in a fundamental rule of international law.” This default prohibition is underscored by the 1949 Israeli-Lebanese General Armistice Agreement by the very nature of it being an armistice agreement, and its specific prohibition of any “element of the land, sea or military or paramilitary forces of either Party, including non-regular forces” from “commit[ing] any warlike or hostile act against […] the other Party […] or […] advance[ing] beyond or pass[ing] over for any purpose whatsoever the Armistice Declaration Line.”
Nor can Lebanon circumvent these prohibitions by empowering Hezbollah to act under domestic law. The characterization of an act of a state as illegal under international law is governed by international law alone and cannot be affected or undone by the characterization of the same act as lawful by domestic law.
This also negates the validity of the “Consent of the Government” argument used to portray Resolution 1701 as weaker on Hezbollah than Resolution 1559. Put simply, international law prohibits the Lebanese Government from providing its “consent” to internationally wrongful acts, or that consent transforming the nature of those unlawful acts. Interpreted in good faith, “Consent of the Government” was meant to empower the Lebanese Government to monopolize the use of force throughout its territory, not to violate international law.
Resolution 1701’s failure
The distinction between Resolution 1701 and Resolution 1559 is, therefore, contrived. Resolution 1701 does not repudiate Resolution 1559. On the contrary, it incorporates it by reference and strengthens its terms by explicitly “call[ing] for” Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah. Lebanon’s responsibility to undertake this action was implicit in Resolution 1559 because the obligation to police and control one’s own territory and prevent non-state actors from using it to harm other states falls, by default, on the state itself—in this case, Lebanon. Furthermore, there is a stronger case to be made for the binding nature of the “call for” Lebanon to act under Resolution 1701 than under Resolution 1559.
Eighteen years on, however, Resolution 1701 can only be described as a failure. Not because its terms are weaker than Resolution 1559, or because it doesn’t contain good legal benchmarks—but because Lebanon, the party responsible for implementing the obligations it contains and its underlying obligations under international law, is unwilling or unable to do so.
Lebanon is built around a system called “Confessionalism”—a quasi-feudalistic system where portions of power are distributed according to religious sect, which, in practice, devolves upon sub-sectarian representative parties. Lebanon can only act by the consensus of all its sub-sectarian representative parties. As an integral part of Lebanon’s political and social fabric and a representative of a legitimate segment of Lebanese society, the Shiites, Hezbollah is part of that consensus—irrespective of its ultimate loyalty to Iran. It is comprised of Lebanese citizens and empowered by them to act on their behalf—and a sizable portion of them, at that.
In the May 2022 parliamentary elections, Hezbollah won 356,122 of approximately 1.8 million votes cast—the largest number of votes for any party, and almost 153,000 votes ahead of the second-largest party. A 2024 poll found that 93% of Shiites—likely Lebanon’s largest and certainly its fastest-growing sect—had a positive view of Hezbollah, 89% of them “very positive.”
Hezbollah is, therefore, not a marginal actor. Lebanon would have to seek the group’s approval, alongside the rest of the country’s sub-sectarian representative parties, to pursue its disarmament. That consent is unlikely to ever happen, as Hezbollah is not in the business of self-destruction. To pursue Hezbollah’s disarmament otherwise would risk plunging Lebanon into a political deadlock, street fighting, or a civil war in which Hezbollah could draw upon its allies from the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance.
UNIFIL is not empowered by its current mandate to proactively act to disarm or restrain Hezbollah. Its purpose is auxiliary: to aid Lebanon in that task. In theory, UNIFIL could be provided with an upgraded mandate permitting it to fight Hezbollah. But UNIFIL’s troop-contributing countries are unlikely to ever approve of putting their soldiers in harm’s way; Lebanon, which took issue with UNIFIL’s unannounced patrols, will never approve of using force against Hezbollah; and such a mandate would never gain Security Council approval, where Russia and China, as permanent members, would exercise their veto to protect Hezbollah.
A sleight of hand
In July, Kataeb Party chairman Samy Gemayel called for implementing Resolution 1559—as Lebanon could simply pick and choose which instruments of international law it would follow. His reasoning was that Resolution 1559 “suits Lebanon,” while Resolution 1701 “serves Israel’s interests” and places it “at the top of the West’s priorities.”
Since both Resolutions call for Hezbollah’s disarmament, the only plausible reason for Gemayel’s opposition to 1701 is that—in contrast to Resolution 1559—it explicitly calls upon Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah. Kataeb’s preference remains, in line with history, to sit back while outsiders fight its battles. This also seems to be the goal of the similarly inclined pro-Lebanon activists.
They seek to undermine Resolution 1701’s credibility by incomprehensibly claiming it is lenient on Hezbollah—contorting both the Resolution’s meaning and intent and international law in the process. They can thus gin up support for a 1559-style Resolution that omits Lebanese responsibility for disarming Hezbollah on the erroneous assumption this will lead the primary responsibility of disarming the group to devolve upon someone else. It is a desperate attempt to burden others with the task of spending their blood and treasure to undo what is fundamentally a Lebanese problem and Lebanese phenomenon, while, in their thinking, enshrining Lebanese inaction in international law.
