Hezbollah plunged Lebanon into yet another crisis when it fired rockets at Israel in response to its attacks on Iran and the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader. The group has handed Israel an excuse to intensify its own strikes on Lebanon—and even potentially invade and occupy more territory, ostensibly to create a buffer zone for self-defense.

The Lebanese state, angered by Hezbollah’s defiance, has officially banned the group’s military wing. But can the state actually stop Hezbollah from firing salvos at Israel—or, for that matter, even from aiming at the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) if challenged?

It has long been feared that if the Lebanese state took on Hezbollah, it could split the LAF, inflame sectarian tensions, and lead to a civil war. But some believe that the ghost of the country’s last civil war is a convenient narrative excuse that only serves Hezbollah and keeps the Lebanese state a hostage to its whims.

Some in Lebanon hoped that Hezbollah would refrain from attacking Israel if only to prove its stated raison d’être of protecting Lebanon from external threats rather than serving at Iran’s beck and call. Immediately upon the start of the war, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam warned the group against dragging Lebanon into the fighting. And for a while it seemed that the group might stay put, as Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem delayed its first press statement. Even after Hezbollah launched a barrage of strikes on Israel, some said that the strikes were meant to be symbolic and limited in scope, intended to threaten Israel with a war on a second front.

But the group may have already concluded that a war with Israel was inevitable, since Israel wouldn’t let up on demands for its complete disarmament and, despite a ceasefire in effect since November 2024, had continued regular military strikes in the group’s stronghold of southern Lebanon. According to Reuters, Hezbollah has been rearming for months, despite the Lebanese army’s assertions in January that it had mostly disarmed the group in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah sees its strength in guerrilla warfare and seems to have believed that an Israeli invasion could even allow it to regain some of its lost legitimacy and enthusiasm among its support base. Most of Hezbollah’s supporters are everyday Shiites in southern Lebanon who run coffee shops or drive taxis and are just as encumbered with monthly bills and dealing with a debilitating economic crisis as their Sunni, Druze, and Christian compatriots. But an Israeli invasion could encourage them to rally behind Hezbollah, turning its existential crisis into a collective battle of survival for most Shiites in Lebanon.

So far, however, Hezbollah’s attacks against Israel have backfired in public discourse. They have exposed the group as an Iranian proxy, an entity that prioritizes Iran’s agenda above the safety of fellow Lebanese citizens.

“Israel has repeatedly struck Hezbollah sites” since the cease-fire with Israel began in November 2024, “but the group didn’t retaliate once,” said Sami Nader, a Lebanese political analyst. “Now, when [Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei is killed, it responds. Why? It is an Iranian response.”

Hezbollah’s solidarity with Iran has angered the Sunnis, the Christians, and even long-term ally and fellow Shiite leader Nabih Berri of the Amal Movement. Berri backed the government’s decision to ban Hezbollah’s military wing.

Nader argued that Hezbollah is largely isolated, and now is the time for the armed forces to challenge the group and establish state control over its weapons. “For long, the alibi against challenging Hezbollah has been: watch out for the civil war; there will be division in the army, chaos in the country. But now the army simply has to do it—they have to clash with Hezbollah, that’s what the people want,” Nader added. “And that’s what armies are for.”

Nader said that there was a risk of violent clashes between Hezbollah and the Lebanese army or various Lebanese ethnic and religious communities, and that this could lead to a civil war. Yet he said Lebanon “should take the risk or forever be condemned to being a failed state.”

He offered the Taif Agreement in 1989—which ended the civil war and mandated all groups (except Hezbollah) to give up their weapons—as a precedent.

Nader said that agreement was made possible only after the Syrian regime dangled the threat of force against the Lebanese Forces, a primarily Christian militia. Now, he argued, the LAF could take help from its Western and Arab allies to disarm Hezbollah. “The international community, the Arabs, are fully mobilized. The government can ask for their help,” he said.

Ironically, Israelis argue that they are the external force paving the path for the Lebanese state to assert its monopoly over Hezbollah’s weapons. At least three former Israeli security officers told Foreign Policy that Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah are intended to weaken the group and allow the Lebanese state to mount a challenge. A weaker Hezbollah would mean fewer weapons and lesser resistance from its fighters and supporters.

“The idea is that Israel will do the heavy lifting, and then the LAF will swoop in, once Hezbollah has been sufficiently weakened and targets softened,” said Jonathan Conricus, a former spokesperson of the Israel Defense Forces. “The Lebanese are counting on this. So are the French.”

“When we hit Hezbollah, it offers them [the LAF] a better chance to disarm the group,” Yossi Kuperwasser, the director of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and formerly the director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, told Foreign Policy over the phone.

The former officials didn’t rule out an invasion but acknowledged that in the past, such wars have come at the expense of lives, money, and reputation. Both suggested that the first steps are to hit Hezbollah’s stockpiles with greater force and repeatedly target its bastions across the country and later hit Lebanese infrastructure—such as roads, bridges, and ports—to fuel public anger against Hezbollah.

Israel has issued fresh evacuation orders for residents of southern Lebanon, a stronghold of support for Hezbollah.

“It is to be seen” whether Israel will invade and occupy the territory, Kuperwasser said when I asked whether the evacuation orders would lead to an invasion. But at the very least, Israel aims to make life much harder for Hezbollah’s support base, assuming that it will further pressure Hezbollah to disarm to secure reconstruction funds.

According to Human Rights Watch, “more than 1.2 million people” were already displaced in Lebanon as a result of the clashes between Israel and Hezbollah between September and November 2024. Now, in addition to the area south of Litani River, Israel has issued a forced evacuation order for the entire Dahiyeh area of Beirut, which is home to hundreds of thousands.

“The Israeli intention in emptying the southern suburbs of its population is, it seems, aimed at breaking the connection between the Shia community and a fairly autonomous space within the capital—a source of communal power,” wrote Michael Young, a senior editor at the Carnegie Middle East Center, in a post on X. “The aim is, simultaneously, to dislocate the community, ensure it cannot return to these areas before many years, if ever, and reshape the demography of Beirut. But for this shocking plan to unfold, we have to see if Israel is given the latitude to systematically raze the area in the weeks ahead.”

But the dislocation of Shiites is already creating tensions. Nader said that compared to 2024, when Shiites from Southern Lebanon were by and large welcomed into homes by members of different Lebanese communities, “this time, we didn’t see the same level of solidarity,” he said. One notable Sunni figure speaking on condition of anonymity told Foreign Policy that Sunni Lebanese are fuming at Hezbollah for sacrificing their security for the sake of Iran, and many may not open doors to homeless Shiites.

And instead of paying heed to growing opposition, Hezbollah has often threatened civil war and showed its preparedness to provoke one—by rioting against Sunni Prime Minister Saad Hariri in 2008 and subsequently taking over the capital; or sending hundreds of young men on motorbikes during the protests against the Beirut port blast in 2020, as I personally witnessed; and as recently as August, when the government decided to disarm Hezbollah.

“This government is implementing an American-Israeli order on terminating the resistance even if this leads to a civil war and internal sedition,” Qassem, Hezbollah’s chief, said in a televised address at the time. “There would be no life for Lebanon if you stand on the other side,” he said.

Yet never since its formation in the early 1980s has Hezbollah faced such opposition. Until two years ago, it was dangerous to say the word “Israel” in Lebanon, and journalists sometimes used the code word “Dixie” when referring to the troublesome neighbor. Now, Lebanese intellectuals are debating in public forums whether Lebanon should make peace with Israel despite Hezbollah’s demand for continued resistance.

But at the same time, no one in Lebanon wants a civil war—a fear that Hezbollah has repeatedly exploited to keep its weapons and hold Lebanon to ransom.