The Israelis have, it seems, reluctantly agreed to a10-day ceasefire between them and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Just as Netanyahu and his ultra-religious radical Zionist terrorists believed that the regime in Iran would collapse within 3 days, they also believe that by maintaining an incessant bombing campaign against Hezbollah targets, either Hezbollah would surrender, or the Lebanese government's army would turn its own weapons against Hezbollah, or that the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese population (broadly Sunni Muslims and Maronite Christians) would take up arms and fight a civil war against the pro-Iranian Shiite terror organization.
For months, the Americans and the Zionists were giving the Lebanese army two options:
- fight Hezbollah to disarm it, in other words a civil war, or
- Israel would forcibly disarm Hezbollah
It now looks like Lebanon will have the double wammy of both an Israeli war and a civil war.
The thing that people must understand is that the Lebanese government and its army are incapable of fighting Hezbollah, and that for several reasons:
- The Lebanese army has been prevented from acquiring sufficient firepower to overcome Hezbollah in any fighting scenario. For years, the Americans refused to arm the Lebanese army because their Zionist whisperers were telling them that a strong Lebanese army would be a threat to Israel. The same old pretext to maintain instability and give Israel a free hand to intervene whenever it chooses. Peace in Lebanon is unacceptable to the Israelis because a strong and stable Lebanon would take the lead in trade relations with the Arab world and thus disadvantage the Israelis who seek a preferential position in such relations. And the dumb Americans obliged, sending the Lebanese army military scarp and forbidding it from acquiring weapons in non-American markets.
- In 1976, when it was the Sunni Muslims of Lebanon who mounted a sedition against the Lebanese government (using the Palestinian PLO as their militia and backed by a secretly pro-US, pro-Israel Syrian regime), the Sunni soldiers of the army deserted to join the Syrian-manufactured Arab Army of Lebanon led by Lieutenant Ahmed Khatib. It was this deserter who managed with Syrian help to separate the Lebanese south (of the Litani) from the central government, forcing the army contingents posted in the south to open the border with Israel to receive food, medical services, schools etc.) That cooperation between these isolated Lebanese army units and the Israelis eventually grew into an alliance when the Israelis invaded the south in 1978. The South Lebanese Army (allied with Israel) was created to stand up to the Arab Army of Lebanon (allied with Syria). The Sunni Muslim soldiers of the Lebanese army deserted and created their own units with loyalty only to Syria and not to their own government in Beirut. In other words, the Lebanese army fractured along sectarian lines into loyalist Maronite brigades and rebel Muslim brigades.
The fear today is that something similar could happen, but this time with the Shiite units of the Lebanese army. All it takes is for Hezbollah to call on all Shiite soldiers to desert their units, and the army breaks apart again. Even if those Shiite soldiers are individually against Hezbollah, they cannot refuse because their families would be in grave danger of retaliation by Hezbollah which essentially holds the Shiite community hostage.
- The Lebanese government has no control over Hezbollah. When it negotiates with the Americans and the Zionists, everyone knows that its words, pledges and assurances are void and null. This has been the case for decades. The government agrees to a UN resolution, but Hezbollah (and the PLO before it) refused to abide by the resolution. I do not understand why the Americans and the Israelis keep this masquerade going on. They know that whatever the Aoun government (now negotiating in Washington) does and says has no impact on, and is non-binding to the pro-Iranian Shiites of Lebanon.
The bottom line is what I have always argued: Hezbollah will NEVER depose its weapons willingly. It is not motivated by land or by assurances or by guarentees or by any real-world elements. Hezbollah is motivated by a radical Islamic fundamentalist ideology based in Tehran; its entire existence, funding and arming comes from Iran. Its 40+ years of existence has nothing to do with so-called Israeli-occupied land in the south. Liberation is just a pretext. Even if ISrael withdraws tomorrow from all areas under dispute in the south, Hezbollah will find another pretext to remain extant. Hezbollah and Iran are motivated by the real or perceived colonial rape of Palestine by anglo-saxon enemies, and is dedicated to avenging the rape.
Therefore all the choreography in Washington about "firsts", like direct negotiations between Lebanon and Israel or a possible peace deal, are propaganda destined to elevate Donald Dumb as a peacemaker when he is no more than an imbecile warmongering vassal of the Zionists. Lebanon and Israel went through the exact same scenario in the early 1980s. Like Hezbollah today, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was "liberating" stuff in the south. After years of cross-border skirmishes, the Israelis invaded in 1982, pushed the PLO out, and made a deal with the government of then-president Amin Gemayel - a deal known as the May 1983 Accord. Problem is this Accord was never implemented. There are many theories as to why it was never implemented. Some say Syria, which had a tacit agreement with the Americans over control of Lebanon in exchange of peace on the Golan, rejected it. Other say that Gemayel was a coward who refused to sign, fearing for his life after his brother Bashir was assassinated by the Syrians. Others claim that the Americans (who sponsored the negotiations) decided to walk out of the May 1983 Accord at the end because the Israelis convinced them that the Accord was globally more in favor of the Lebanese side.
We are at a similar juncture, with Aoun replacing Gemayel, Hezbollah replacing the PLO, while radical terrorist Zionists remain in control of the Israeli government (Sharon in 1982 and Netanyahu in 2026), and a moronic Trump administration replacing the equally moronic Reagan administration. In 1983, the US MArines, French paratroopers, as well as Italian and British military contingents were in Beirut backing the Gemayel government. Israel was occupying half the country and the Syrian occupier did not fight the Israeli occupier because of the 1974 understanding that Henry Kissinger enacted with Syria's Assad: Keep quiet on the Golan and take Lebanon in exchange. The Lebanese population was mostly for the agreement, and a pro-US president was in charge. All the stars were aligned for a successful completion and implementation of the May 1983 Accord. Today, a rather similar scenario is in place. Everyone, except Hezbollah and Iran, want an agreement. But the Americans and the Zionists are setting a trap for the Aoun government whereby they will blame it for the failure they are planning.
I do think that the Lebanese government is being bamboozled into negotiating an agreement that both the Israelis and the Americans plan on scuttling, while declaring that they exerted goodwill for peacemaking but that it was the Lebanese who failed to go through with it. Yes, the Lebanese government will NOT go through any deal they reach with the Zionists simply because it can't materially overcome Hezbollah, and it won't confront Hezbollah because history will blame the Aoun government for starting a civil war.
How can the Lebanese government negotiate an agreement as a sovereign state while it has no sovereignty, thanks to the Iranian occupation (i.e. Hezbollah) and the Israeli occupation in the south.
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Sectarian fears increase as a Beirut area says no to displacement centre
Justin Salhani
Thu, April 16, 2026
A boy sits next to a fire outside his family's tent at a temporary encampment for displaced people in Beirut, Lebanon, April 1, 2026 [File: Adnan Abidi/Reuters]
Beirut, Lebanon – In late March, a government-planned centre in Beirut’s Karantina neighbourhood for people displaced by Israel’s war was cancelled after a public outcry.
A number of politicians and protesters were opposed to setting up the centre, citing a number of reasons, including increased traffic to the area near Beirut’s port and health concerns. But there were also sectarian motivations with some of Karantina’s Christian population leading objections to housing the displaced, who are predominantly Shia Muslims, citing demographic concerns and using sectarian slogans reminiscent of language used during the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War.
A major source of tension is that Israel has targeted displaced Lebanese, leading many to fear that hosting their compatriots may bring increased danger to their own homes and families. There is also extreme polarisation over the war inside Lebanon. Supporters of Hezbollah, the Shia armed group that has been fighting Israel, say it avoided war for 15 months while Israel repeatedly violated a November 2024 ceasefire while its critics accuse it of giving Israel an excuse to invade by launching attacks on Israel on March 2, leading to the forced displacement of 1.2 million people.
As Israel’s war on Lebanon exacerbates disputes within Lebanon, some people are afraid the violence may push Lebanese communities into a confrontation or even civil war – even as a 10-day ceasefire is set to begin.
Fear and discrimination
On March 2, Israel intensified its war on Lebanon for the second time in less than two years. After more than a year without responding to Israel’s continued attacks, Hezbollah fired rockets across the border after Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed on the first day of the US-Israeli war on Iran on February 28.
Israel moved fast, pouring troops across the border and demolishing entire towns. Areas across southern Lebanon and Beirut have been devastated by air strikes, drone strikes and attacks from Israeli warships.
And as the war continues, so too does the fear that Israel is trying to reopen old wounds. The cancellation of the planned displacement centre in Karantina in particular is significant because of the area’s history during Lebanon’s Civil War.
Before the Civil War, Karantina, which gets its name from the French word for Quarantine, was one of Beirut’s poorer districts. It was home to a mix of communities, including Christians and Sunni Muslims, but also Armenian, Kurdish, Syrian and Egyptian labourers, and many from southern Lebanon or the Bekaa Valley who had come to the capital seeking work.
In the early days of the war, the right-wing Phalange movement waged a campaign to rid the area of Muslim communities that eventually culminated in the 1976 Karantina massacre. Diala Lteif, a research fellow at the Margaret Anstee Centre for Global Studies who is writing a book on Karantina, told Al Jazeera that the exact number of victims is still unknown but thought to be 1,000 to 3,000. Many of the victims who weren’t killed were expelled to areas in what became known during the war as the predominantly-Muslim West Beirut.
Sources familiar with the planned displacement centre, including an aid worker with an international charity who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the controversy over it was part of a campaign that started on social media and was then picked up by Lebanese media and right-wing Christian political parties.
The rhetoric currently being directed towards displaced people in Karantina, Lteif said, is reminiscent of the civil war. “This foundational logic that areas need to be segregated is the logic that motivated the [Karantina] massacre,” she said. “It brings back this trauma from this time.”
The civil war pitted communities against one another, and each committed massacres and had massacres committed against them. Today, Karantina is home to mostly Lebanese citizens from Christian and Sunni Muslim faiths. But the trauma of the war is still present among the population.
A further factor complicating matters is that many in Lebanon associate displaced populations from southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs with Hezbollah. While support for the group is not universal among Shia Muslims, the party draws the vast majority of its support from that religious community. Hezbollah and its ally Amal also often claim to be the sole legitimate representatives of Lebanon’s Shia Muslims.
“The political sectarian system in Lebanon lends itself to that association [between Shia Muslims and Hezbollah] and [so does] the sectarian rhetoric of basically every single political party, not just Hezbollah, but all of them in Lebanon,” Lara Deeb, an anthropologist at Scripps College in Claremont, California, told Al Jazeera. “The problem then is that a lot of people don’t see the line between the political party or a political perspective and the person and the people, and it all kind of becomes blurred into one.”
Some are welcoming
The Disaster Risk Management Unit, which reports to the Lebanese prime minister’s office, told local media that the site of the displacement centre was being prepared as a precaution but there were no plans for it to be put in use.
Not far away from that site is another displacement centre in the same Karantina district. It has taken in about 1,000 displaced people from southern Lebanon, Beirut’s southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley.
On Wednesday, children played football while adults sat on plastic chairs around the property and chatted. This site, run by a Lebanese charity called Offre Joie, first opened in 2024 to receive a number of displaced people who were sleeping in tents in downtown Beirut.
When war returned in 2026, many of those people also returned. Marie Daou, a volunteer with the charity, told Al Jazeera that the centre has had no problems with the local community. Some of the displaced also work with the charity to help manage themselves. Daou said the charity knows the identities of all the displaced and security forces closely monitor the centre’s data to make sure they know who is on site.
Daou said the centre has ample hot water and its residents get decent meals, which is better than many other centres around Beirut and the country. In some of those other locations, displaced people have found conditions so difficult that they decided to return to their homes in areas under blanket evacuation orders from the Israeli military. But Daou said that in the Offre Joie centre, no one has left despite more than 40 days of displacement and war.
Outside Daou’s office, Nadine, 30, corralled a group of children. She was displaced on March 2 from her home in Burj al-Barajneh in Beirut’s southern suburbs and came to the centre in Karantina with her five siblings. She wants to return to her home, she said, but if the war is prolonged, she has little other choice.
“For now, we’re staying here. You can’t go back there [to her home] because there is danger, but now, of course, nowhere is safe,” she said. “But some places are better than others. We’ll be patient. We’ll endure.”
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