Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas recently reached an agreement to regulate the presence of armed Palestinian factions in Lebanon as the country manages Hezbollah’s weapons caches in the south in accordance with the November 27, 2024, ceasefire arrangement with Israel. The Lebanese-Palestinian accord ostensibly ended the factions’ independent armed presence inside Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps, which are outside of the control of the Lebanese state. A Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee subsequently met with Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and decided on a timetable for implementing the disarmament plan, which will begin in mid-June in Beirut-area camps and expand gradually to others in the south and north of the country.

But the implementation of the accord is subject to the ability of the Fateh faction—the group that Abbas supposedly controls within the camps—to corral the other factions into a unified position on respecting the Lebanese state’s sovereignty. The main roadblock in this endeavor is likely to be Hamas’s and Islamic Jihad’s stance on disarmament in Lebanon, in light of the current Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip and what they see as their role of resisting the liquidation of the Question of Palestine. As has been the case since Hamas’s takeover of Gaza in 2007, it and Islamic Jihad operate independently of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and consider themselves the true defenders of Palestinians everywhere.

Fateh and other factions have thus far agreed to implement the accord, but Hamas has refrained from fully endorsing it and has insisted instead that Lebanese authorities improve the Palestinian refugees’ social and economic conditions in Lebanon. Hamas’s position likely is a diversion from directly accepting or rejecting disarmament, and it could derail much of the plan because of the organization’s large presence in the camps. Still, to Lebanese authorities and the Lebanese public, disarming both Hezbollah and Palestinian factions is essential for the revival of the Lebanese state and its institutions after years of the state’s failure to assert sovereignty over all Lebanese territory.

Since assuming their offices in January and February 2025, respectively, President Aoun and Prime Minister Salam have made enforcing a state monopoly on arms in the country and extending state control over all Lebanese territory their main goals. Their tenures began after a presidential vacuum that lasted for more than two years following the expiration of former President Michel Aoun’s term in October 2022, and paralyzed whatever was left of the Lebanese state’s institutions. The new president and prime minister also took up their offices after a punishing war with Israel that weakened Hezbollah and killed its top leaders, including Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah had been the main obstacle to electing a new president because of its insistence on choosing one who would allow it to maintain its military independence from the state in order to fight Israel.

Essentially, Lebanon’s executive authority wants to do away with the off again, on again Palestinian armed presence inside and outside the refugee camps. For the current Lebanese leaders, circumstances have changed from both the late 1960s—when Lebanon was forced to sign the 1969 Cairo Agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization that allowed Palestinian armed action against Israel to be launched from Lebanon—and the long years of Syrian military domination and the subsequent outsize influence of Hezbollah.

The Lebanese Parliament abrogated the Cairo Agreement in 1987, an act that made illegal the independent Palestinian military presence in the country, while the December 2024 collapse of the Baathist regime in Syria and the weakening of Hezbollah provided the opportunity to end that presence once and for all. To be sure, the weakening of Hezbollah in its war with Israel and the collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria allowed the realization of Aoun’s and Salam’s wish to regulate weapons possession and use in Lebanon.

Shortly after Assad’s departure on December 8, 2024—and even before Aoun’s election as president and Salam’s selection as premier—the Lebanese Army took control of three bases outside of the Palestinian camps belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command and Fateh-al-Intifada, two factions that were allied with Syrian Baathist regime, and confiscated their weapons. President Aoun recently announced that in reality, the Lebanese Army has dismantled six Palestinian armed positions outside of the camps—three in the Beqaa Valey, one south of Beirut, and two in the north.

What will be extremely difficult, however, is disarming the factions operating inside refugee camps if a peaceful process is not worked out with them. This was the reason for Abbas’s intervention to facilitate the Lebanese state’s mission despite expected resistance from Hamas. Back in 2007, the Lebanese Army fought a three-month battle against a militant Islamist group, Fateh al-Islam, that operated independently of the PA and had taken over the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in the north, purportedly in preparation for creating an Islamic state there. The battle destroyed the camp and left hundreds of civilians, military personnel, and militants dead. Needless to say, neither President Aoun nor Prime Minister Salam nor the Lebanese Army are currently interested in a similar bloody conflict as Lebanon seeks to restore stability and normalcy.

But what might make Palestinian disarmament a little easier is the fact that Hezbollah has allowed the Lebanese Army to confiscate some 80 percent of its weapons in the area south of the Litani River, a major stipulation of the ceasefire agreement. The process has so far been peaceful and both parties have avoided a confrontation that could easily lead to dreaded clashes far wider than the area of conflict. Indeed, Aoun has emphasized that disarming Hezbollah is a “sensitive” and “delicate” process whose implementation should not harm national peace. He also emphasized that the approach to the party’s disarmament should be “conciliatory” and “nonconfrontational.” Considering how damaging to domestic, national unity and to relations with the country’s Palestinians disarming refugee camps could be if carried out hastily, this process should not be any different.

Disarming armed Palestinian factions inside and outside refugee camps in Lebanon is an essential step toward restoring the Lebanese state’s full sovereignty over its territory. Continuing to disarm Hezbollah serves the same purpose. Agreement about commencing the process with Palestinian factions in mid-June is a welcome development. But all factions must be on board, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, despite their reservations about giving up arms that they consider important for their war with Israel. With Lebanon seeking stability following an economic meltdown and a long war between Hezbollah and Israel, leaving weapons outside the hands of the Lebanese Army—the nation’s ultimate protector—is a recipe for chaos and the continued weakening of the Lebanese state.