When Naim Qassem, Hezbollah's Secretary-General, speaks of"handing Lebanon over to Israel" because the party is threatened with losing its weapons, he is turning the equation upside down. Lebanon is not a piece of land inherited by Hezbollah to protect as it pleases, nor is it a farm whose fate is decided by a Secretary-General or a Shura Council in Beirut's southern suburbs. The state is the decision-maker in war and peace, and any weapon outside its legitimacy is necessarily a weapon outside the national consensus, no matter how it is tinged with resistance slogans.

The irony is that those who raise the slogan"We will not surrender our weapons because the occupation exists" are the same ones opening the Lebanese front to Iranian agendas and making the southern border hostage to regional negotiating messages. Weapons, supposedly meant to protect Lebanon, have become a means of dragging it into confrontations not decided by its people, of disrupting its economy, and of isolating its foreign policy from Arab and international consensus.

Hezbollah wants the Lebanese to believe that toppling its armed tutelage is an invitation to civil war, as if stability is possible under the threat of a militia that monopolizes power and decides when battles will erupt. In reality, the threat of civil war is a clear admission that weapons are no longer"defense of the homeland," but rather a domestic blackmail tool.

Anyone who accuses Nawaf Salam's government of implementing the"Israeli-American project" simply because it is trying to re-establish the monopoly on arms in the hands of Lebanese state institutions must explain how the continued existence of its weapons, without any accountability or controls, has provided Israel with a permanent pretext to attack Lebanon and has kept the country in a state of perpetual, suspended war, ravaging its economy and squandering its energies.

The real resistance today lies not in maintaining an arsenal outside the Lebanese state, but in building a strong state capable of confronting Israel through a unified political decision, effective diplomacy, and legitimate alliances. The insistence that Lebanon can only be protected through the"Karbala battle" that Qassem threatens represents a continuation of a bet on a cross-border sectarian project, not a comprehensive national one.

Lebanon will not be handed over to Israel if the weapons are returned to state institutions, but it will certainly be handed over to the unknown if it remains hostage to Hezbollah's rifle.