The state cannot ask us to obey alone

A state cannot ask its citizens to obey while allowing an armed party to decide which laws apply to it. That contradiction has become unavoidable in Lebanon. The explosives seized at Dahr al-Baydar, Hezbollah’s demand that they be returned, and reports of Iranian preparations for another regional confrontation now converge on one question: who has the authority to commit Lebanese lives?

On October 15, Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah acknowledged that the vehicle and its cargo belonged to the party. He said the explosives were intended for operations against Israeli forces occupying Lebanese territory and demanded the release of the detainees and the return of the seized materials. He also rejected the government's March 2 decision banning Hezbollah’s military and security activities, and warned the authorities against continuing their measures.

The government has already stated its position. On March 2, the Cabinet, meeting under President Joseph Aoun, prohibited Hezbollah’s military and security activities, required it to surrender its weapons and affirmed the state’s exclusive authority over war and peace. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam announced that decision. Fadlallah’s response therefore challenges an existing government decision, not an aspiration awaiting definition.

The regional context makes that challenge more dangerous. On October 15, The Jerusalem Post, citing two unnamed diplomatic sources, reported that Iran had warned Hezbollah to prepare for renewed American attacks on Iran. This remains an unverified report of a private message, not a public Iranian announcement or proof that Hezbollah has decided to enter another war. Meanwhile, the Lebanese presidency’s account of Aoun’s October 14 call with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi emphasised diplomatic solutions.

Those distinctions matter because Lebanon cannot afford an argument assembled from rumours. Hezbollah’s public rejection of state authority is sufficient to establish the political problem. The regional reporting adds urgency to a question that already requires an answer: can the government prevent a party’s commitments to Iran from becoming obligations imposed on the Lebanese population?

Iran may defend its interests and maintain political relationships. It has no authority to assign Lebanon a military role. Hezbollah’s Lebanese identity and political representation do not give it a separate mandate to decide the country’s exposure to war. Citizens cannot exercise meaningful sovereignty if their government speaks in their name while another organisation retains the power to determine what risks they must endure.

Israel’s occupation and attacks are real, and Israel remains responsible for its conduct. They make protection urgent. They do not establish that Hezbollah alone may decide how Lebanon responds. The state’s failure to secure every part of its territory is a grave problem; accepting a permanent rival military authority does not resolve it. A government that claims exclusive responsibility must demonstrate how it intends to exercise it.

This is where the social contract enters the argument. Citizens accept common rules and renounce private force because political authority is supposed to protect their equal standing. They do not surrender their rights so that officials can negotiate, indefinitely, which armed organisation remains exempt. The bargain was never that citizens give up both their capacity to defend themselves and their influence over decisions that expose them to danger.

Political psychology helps explain why this arrangement corrodes more than confidence in particular leaders. Tom Tyler’s research on legal legitimacy shows that voluntary cooperation is closely connected to whether people regard authorities as entitled to be obeyed, and to how those authorities exercise their power. A state sustained only by fear of sanctions has a different relationship with its citizens from one they consider legitimate.

In Lebanon, selective enforcement risks teaching a destructive lesson: restraint brings obligations, while the capacity to threaten brings exemptions. Citizens who follow the rules may begin to experience their compliance as vulnerability. The danger is that obedience loses its connection to equal membership and becomes evidence of who lacks the power to refuse.

That is a political warning, not a licence for everyone to acquire weapons. Reproducing Hezbollah’s claimed exception would multiply the very system that denies us a state. But neither can officials invoke the danger of disorder to demand unlimited patience from people whose security remains subject to decisions they cannot influence. Public restraint must not become a resource that leaders spend to avoid confronting armed privilege.

Lebanon’s Constitution places equality before the law at the centre of citizenship. Article 7 recognises equal civil and political rights and common public duties. This is the standard against which the state’s conduct must be judged. A party that considers a government decision unlawful can contest it through legal institutions. Its own declaration of invalidity cannot settle the matter for everyone else.

For Aoun and Salam, the immediate test is whether the decision they announced survives Hezbollah’s refusal. The larger test concerns political accountability. The government must explain what follows when an organisation openly rejects a binding decision on military activity. If implementation faces constraints, citizens are owed an account of those constraints and the measures being taken to overcome them. Repeating the principle of exclusive authority while leaving its rejection unanswered turns sovereignty into a statement issued for international consumption.

Citizens, in turn, retain the right to organise, protest and demand that the government honour its commitments. Where ordinary channels are systematically neutralised, peaceful civil disobedience can become a defensible means of insisting on equal citizenship. Its purpose must be to make public authority accountable, without granting a new group the coercive privileges it condemns in another.

If demanding equal application of the law makes citizens inconvenient, becoming inconvenient is a civic responsibility. The president and prime minister cannot ask the public to defend the idea of the state while treating its enforcement as someone else’s problem. They hold office precisely to turn that idea into decisions that bind the powerful.

This demand includes Hezbollah’s supporters. Their citizenship cannot be reduced to the party’s military choices, and their protection must never depend on political conversion. They have the same right as other Lebanese to a future that is not committed to war without accountable public authority. Equal citizenship loses its meaning if it excludes the people whose allegiance is most contested.

The state cannot continue asking the unarmed to carry the entire burden of restraint. It must decide whether its authority binds those capable of defying it, or whether obedience remains a duty reserved for everyone else. We did not consent to a republic in which the government represents us abroad while an armed organisation determines our limits at home. The first obligation of this state is to stop making citizenship the weaker position in Lebanon.