JERUSALEM – The seeming alliance between the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and the Hezbollah terrorist movement is adding greater urgency to calls for the Trump administration to pull the plug on its generous aid to the LAF, some analysts charge.
‘Hezbollah and the Lebanese army are the same,’ Edy Cohen, a Lebanese-born Israeli scholar of Hezbollah, told Fox News Digital. Cohen, a researcher at the Eitan Center, added, ‘Trump must not fund the Lebanese.’ He noted the Lebanese army gave Hezbollah intelligence information about Israel.
The London-based Times newspaper reported last week that an LAF chief sent a classified document to Hezbollah. The LAF‘s Suhil Bahij Gharb, who oversees military intelligence for southern Lebanon, secured the confidential material from a military facility run by the U.S., France and the U.N. interim force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the newspaper reported.
On the day of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the U.S. State Department posted a fact sheet about USA-LAF cooperation. ‘Since 2006, U.S. investments of more than $3 billion to the LAF enabled the Lebanese military to be a stabilizing force against regional threats,’ noted the document.
A senior Trump administration official told Fox News Digital that ‘Nothing really has been honored by Hezbollah since 2006’ and ‘Lebanon has a chance because Israel destroyed Hezbollah’s leadership.’ The official added there is a ‘historic opportunity’ with President Aoun. In early January, the Lebanese Parliament elected the commander of the LAF, Joseph Aoun, as president of Lebanon.
The growing questions over the U.S.-LAF partnership come at a time when the U.S. agreed to Israel’s request to extend the ceasefire arrangement between Jerusalem and Hezbollah until Feb. 18. The U.S. government said in a statement, ‘The Government of Lebanon, the Government of Israel, and the Government of the United States will also begin negotiations for the return of Lebanese prisoners captured after October 7, 2023.’
Hezbollah, however, seeks to inflame the fragile ceasefire, according to Israeli experts.
AP reported that Israeli forces killed two people and wounded 17 last Monday, according to Lebanese health officials. Hezbollah’s new leader Naim Kassem said his group won’t accept the extension of the ceasefire – a stinging indictment of the Lebanese government that agreed to extend the pause in combat.
‘Israel has to withdraw because the 60 days are over,’ Kassem said. ‘We won’t accept any excuses to extend one second or one day.’
‘Any delay in the withdrawal is the responsibility of the United Nations, the U.S., France and Israel,’ he added.
Last week, pro-Hezbollah Shiite residents of southern Lebanon defied Israeli army orders and sought to storm into their villages. As a result, at least 22 people were killed and 124 others injured by Israeli forces, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Hezbollah has used the Shiite villages and residents to attack Israelis since its ally, Hamas, massacred over 1,200 people in southern Israel. Hezbollah launched its attack one day after the Hamas invasion.
A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told Fox News Digital about the fast-moving developments in Lebanon that there is ‘nothing new on that front except what you saw from PMO.’
The PMO is an abbreviation for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office. Fox News Digital reported on Friday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, ‘Since the ceasefire agreement has not yet been fully enforced by the Lebanese government, the gradual withdrawal process will continue, in full coordination with the United States.’
When asked about the collusion between the LAF and Hezbollah, the IDF spokesperson said, ‘We won’t comment on that.’
Walid Phares, a leading expert on Hezbollah and Lebanon, told Fox News Digital, ‘It is clear that Hezbollah has had a massive opposition to its military presence in Lebanon at least since May 2008 when they invaded half of the capital and parts of the mountain to bring down the government of the ‘Cedars revolution’ after the Syrian withdrawal in 2005.’
Phares, who has previously advised candidate Trump, added, ‘In Washington, D.C., there is a debate about arming or not the Lebanese army. Hezbollah has a lot of influence in the LAF. Some lawmakers want to stop the support to the army, others preach that maintaining that support will keep it away from Hezbollah.’
He recommended a new policy: ‘Rerouting the money to new units in the Lebanese army dedicated only to disarm Hezbollah. These units should report to the command of the army and the president of the republic and should be funded on projects only.’
Phares said, ‘When Israel eliminated the leadership of the terror militia most Lebanese hoped it was the moment to end Hezbollah and have the army disarm it. People hoped Lebanon will be able to free itself and join the Abraham Accords. But again, the Biden administration didn’t help because of the Iran deal.’
Foreign policy critics of the Biden administration argued that he was wedded to the Iran nuclear deal and did not want to pick fights with Iranian regime allies, so he rekindled the Obama-era nuclear agreement with Tehran. Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal because, he argued, it did not stop Tehran from building a nuclear bomb.
IDF Lt. Col. (Res.) Sarit Zehavi, president and founder of the Israel-based Alma Research and Education Center, told Fox News Digital, ‘Hezbollah is coming back in south Lebanon [and is] opposed to the arrangement. The Lebanese Army is not fulfilling its mission to deploy effectively in south Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah from coming back.’
A spokesman for Lebanon’s embassy referred Fox News Digital to a spokesperson in Beirut, who did not answer multiple press queries.
Zehavi, who lives close to the Lebanese border, said, ‘We did not see the Lebanese Army disarming Hezbollah. Hezbollah is coming back to those towns. If there are still weapons in those towns, I believe there is, it means that they will be capable of executing terror attacks.’
She said, ‘It is within the interests of Hezbollah to cause death, to cause friction to its own Lebanese civilians. And to present the IDF as a force that should not be in Lebanon.’ She warned, ‘We should not fall into the fake message of Hezbollah.’ Zehavi said after the second war in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel it was agreed that Hezbollah should not be in south Lebanon. UNIFIL has ignored the Hezbollah military buildup since the Second Lebanon War in 2006, according to Israel.
A U.S. State Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital press query about whether the American government will end aid to the LAF.
THE Associated Press contributed to this report.