Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem said on Tuesday 12 May 2026 that the Iran-backed group’s weapons are not on the table for the upcoming round of Lebanese-Israeli negotiations, in a written statement broadcast from the group’s Al-Manar channel based in the southern suburbs of Beirut at grid reference 36S YC 32136 47946 (33.8463°N, 35.5089°E). The intervention came two days before the third round of direct talks between Lebanon and Israel was due to open at the US State Department in Washington on Thursday 14 May and Friday 15 May.

Qassem framed the question of Hezbollah’s arsenal as a strictly internal Lebanese matter, addressed to the group’s own fighters rather than to the Lebanese state or the Americans. The statement reaffirms a position the Hezbollah chief has held publicly since at least March 2026, when he first ruled out ceasefire negotiations under fire. By repeating it on the eve of a US-brokered round in Washington, Qassem has effectively told the Lebanese delegation what it may not bring with it to the State Department.

The Lebanese delegation departing for Washington is led at the ambassador level, with envoy Simon Karam and Lebanon’s ambassador in Washington Nada Hamadeh Moawad joined by representatives of the Lebanese Army. President Joseph Aoun has so far declined US pressure to engage Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directly, telling visiting US Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa on Monday that an actual ceasefire on the ground must come first.

The wording is precise. Qassem is not refusing all engagement; he is excluding the arsenal from the negotiating menu and casting it as a sovereignty question reserved for an “internal Lebanese matter”. That formulation deliberately collapses the gap between Hezbollah and the Lebanese state, even as President Aoun has used some of his sharpest language to date against the group, accusing critics of his diplomacy of treasonous logic.

In the same statement, Qassem addressed the group’s fighters along the contact line, including the Kfarkela sector at 36S YB 28640 64943 (33.0991°N, 35.4500°E) and the rest of the broken ceasefire belt south of the Litani River. He vowed continued resistance “however long it takes and however great the sacrifices”, and promised that Hezbollah would turn the battlefield “into hell for Israel”.

The language is the conventional vocabulary of Hezbollah’s protracted-war doctrine: endurance, sacrifice and the cost imposed on the adversary over time. It is not a threat of a single dramatic strike. It is a public promise that the group will absorb losses for as long as Israel maintains forces inside southern Lebanon, and a signal to its own ranks that no order to disarm or to stand down is forthcoming from the leadership.

Reuters-tracked Lebanese authority figures place the death toll since the resumption of fighting on 2 March 2026 at more than 2,700 people, and Al Jazeera’s tally puts the figure at over 2,840 dead and approximately one million displaced. Israel maintains forces inside roughly six percent of southern Lebanese territory, a buffer running north from the UN-demarcated Blue Line that anchors the entire dispute.

The third round of US-brokered direct talks between Lebanon and Israel is scheduled for 14 and 15 May 2026 at the State Department in Washington, located at grid reference 18S UJ 19212 07057 (38.8938°N, 77.0846°W). According to Lebanese reporting by Naharnet, the agenda is split in two: Thursday’s discussion focuses on consolidating the ceasefire that took hold on 17 April, with Friday reserved for the wider security and political tracks.

A US State Department official told reporters last week that Washington’s objective is a “comprehensive peace and security agreement”, language that goes beyond a ceasefire and explicitly aims at the eventual disarmament of Hezbollah and a separate Lebanon-Israel framework. Netanyahu has been blunt about the Israeli aim, telling reporters on 9 May 2026 that he wants “the dismantling of Hezbollah’s weapons” and “a real peace agreement that will last for generations”.

That is the gap Qassem has now widened. Lebanon’s negotiating team is being asked to discuss a security architecture whose Israeli and American sponsors have publicly defined as ending Hezbollah’s military role, while the head of Hezbollah has used the eve of the talks to declare the arsenal a sovereign matter that cannot appear on any negotiating agenda. The Lebanese state’s traditional fudge, that the army will eventually absorb or supersede the group, no longer has the runway it had before 2 March.

The 17 April ceasefire, extended for three weeks at the second round of talks on 23 April when Trump hosted both delegations at the White House, is a ceasefire mainly in the documents. The Naqoura sector at 36S XB 99858 65467 (33.1095°N, 35.1419°E), home to UNIFIL headquarters, sits within view of an active contact line where Israeli evacuation orders, Hezbollah missile and drone salvoes, and air strikes have continued through May.

On the night of 6 to 7 May 2026, Israeli forces conducted the first publicly acknowledged strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs since the April truce, killing what Israel identified as the commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, Ahmad Ghaleb Ballout, and heavily damaging a residential building in Dahieh. Hezbollah responded with claimed retaliatory fire on Israeli vehicles and troop concentrations along the south Lebanon front, and on 9 May 2026 launched missiles and drones at northern Israel in answer to the Dahieh strike, according to Lebanese reporting.

Israeli forces also issued evacuation warnings for nine villages in southern Lebanon on 9 May, an action that in current usage tends to precede air strikes or armoured operations rather than mere precaution. The pattern is consistent with a counter-Hezbollah campaign that is treated by Israel as continuing under the political cover of the ceasefire, and treated by Hezbollah as the justification for its own ongoing operations. The death and displacement figures cited above accumulate within that operational frame, not in a peacetime one.

Sources

• Asharq Al-Awsat / AFP wire, “Hezbollah Chief Says Group’s Weapons Not Part of Negotiations with Israel”, 12 May 2026
• LaPresse News, “Lebanon, Hezbollah: Disarmament is not on the table”, 12 May 2026
• Al Jazeera, “Hezbollah leader urges Lebanon’s government to pull out of Israel talks”, April 2026
• The National, “Lebanon and Israel to hold third round of talks in Washington next week”, 7 May 2026
• Arab News / AFP, “Lebanon, Israel to hold new talks in Washington May 14-15”, 7 May 2026
• Naharnet, “What will new Lebanon-Israel talks discuss?”, 8 May 2026
• Naharnet, “Issa meets Aoun, Berri ahead of third round of Israeli-Lebanese talks”, 11 May 2026
• Xinhua, “Israel, Lebanon to hold third round of talks in Washington next week”, 8 May 2026
• Haaretz, “Hezbollah Chief Rejects Disarmament and Talks With Israel”, 25 March 2026
• Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “Hezbollah Leader Vows To Retain Weapons”, 27 April 2026