Lebanon’s central political crisis is no longer simply about Hezbollah’s weapons. It is about whether the Lebanese state can finally establish a political order in which no community, party or armed organization possesses a security role beyond the authority of the state. For all the involvement of regional and international powers, the answer cannot ultimately come from Israel, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United States or even the Lebanese Armed Forces. The decisive answer must come from the Lebanese themselves.

There is no sustainable military solution to Lebanon’s Hezbollah problem. Israel may destroy weapons and infrastructure, while the Lebanese Armed Forces may attempt to expand state authority, but neither approach can manufacture political consent. Weapons can be eliminated temporarily; the political grievances that sustain them cannot be bombed away.

The real challenge is therefore political: Can Lebanon construct another historic compromise that persuades Hezbollah and its constituency to accept the Lebanese state as the country’s sole legitimate military authority?

That may sound almost impossible. Yet Lebanon’s history is essentially a history of political compromises reached after periods of devastating conflict.

The modern Lebanese political system was built around communal accommodation. The National Pact of 1943 established an unwritten understanding between Christians and Muslims at a time when Lebanon’s identity and political future were deeply contested. Christians agreed to reduce their reliance on Western protection, while Muslims, particularly Sunnis, accepted Lebanon as an independent political entity rather than pursuing union with Syria.

The arrangement was famously criticized by journalist George Naccache as “two negations that do not make a nation.” His criticism captured Lebanon’s fundamental weakness: its communities often defined themselves by what they opposed rather than by a shared national project.

But perhaps those “negations” were precisely what allowed Lebanon to survive.

A political compromise does not require every community to believe the same thing. It requires communities to accept boundaries that prevent their differences from becoming a permanent war. The National Pact did not eliminate Lebanon’s divisions, but it created a framework for managing them.

The Taif Agreement of 1989 went........

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