Beyond the Rome Talks: Pilot Zones, Hezbollah, and Rebuilding State Authority in South Lebanon

The second round of Lebanon-Israel talks in Rome—and the seventh round overall—is scheduled from August 4 to 6. Lebanon heads to the talks facing both tailwinds and headwinds. On the positive side, the implementation of the first pilot zones—test areas in the south where the Lebanese army is to take full security control—is proceeding apace, and the recent summit between Presidents Aoun and Trump in Washington gave Aoun’s standing and choices a boost in the country. On the negative side, Israel remains insistent that it will not discuss further military withdrawal from its self-declared buffer zone behind the “Yellow Line” and wants the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) to take major steps against Hezbollah. Prime Minister Netanyahu also had his own summit with Trump after Aoun’s, and it is not clear what the two might have agreed on regarding Lebanon.

Regionally, the United States and Iran have fallen back into an escalatory cycle, and exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah threaten a return to war in the Lebanon theatre. The second Rome talks should aim to build on the forward momentum represented by the first pilot zones, expand step-by-step progress toward both Israeli withdrawals and Hezbollah disarmament, and fend off a destructive return to war in Lebanon.

Competing Agendas

The Lebanese delegation’s agenda is fairly clear: it wants to firm up the ceasefire that has been honored more in the breach than the observance; a cessation of Israel’s demolition activities of towns and villages under occupation; and agreement on the next phase of pilot zones within the Israeli-occupied Yellow Line area including an overall timetable for Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.

The delegation is buoyed by President Aoun’s summit in Washington. Aoun delivered Lebanon’s position to what he felt was a sympathetic Trump and emphasized the need for a full Israeli withdrawal, a sped-up timeline of pilot zone rollouts, and an efficient mechanism for verification. He also came away with renewed promises for U.S. support to the Lebanese army and a Trump announcement to restore direct flights between Beirut and the United States after a suspension of more than 40 years.

There have also been reports that the two discussed a potential U.S.-Lebanon security agreement that would build long-term strategic cooperation and enable Lebanon to return as a stable and reliable state ally amid the fast-changing Levant region. The two also reportedly discussed the need for a donor conference and opportunities for U.S. companies in Lebanon, especially in strategic sectors such as energy, electricity, telecoms, infrastructure, and digital transformation.

The summit also strengthened President Aoun’s political hand in the country after the shaky rollout of the trilateral framework agreement between Lebanon, Israel, and the United States in late June. The summit with Trump was seen by many in the country as a high-level and long-awaited win, and the respectful, friendly, and measured tone of the public component of the meeting eased some domestic tensions. Both leaders affirmed the need for deeper coordination and progress toward establishing sovereignty and stability, but they also referred respectfully to the pivotal role of parliament speaker Nabih Berri. And while discussing the need for full sovereignty and the need to disarm Hezbollah, the tone was pragmatic, with President Trump even responding to a question by saying he was willing to talk with Hezbollah if President Aoun made such a request.

The Israeli delegation is likely to arrive in Rome with an almost opposite roadmap to the Lebanese. While Lebanon wants the next phase of pilot zones to be within Israel’s occupied Yellow Line area, the Israeli delegation is likely to propose pilot zones outside its declared buffer zone. These might include areas that Israel is currently targeting but has not moved into or future areas that Israel moves into and would then propose handing over to the LAF. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is currently focused on the Ali Taher ridge, which it considers a strategic Hezbollah stronghold, but might also highlight other areas to the north and east, such as Iqlim al Tuffah and Jabal al Rihan, or other Hezbollah strongholds in the Bekaa. The Israeli proposal might be that either the LAF moves against these positions and neutralizes them or the IDF will deal with them itself.

The competing approaches of the two delegations are built into competing logics in the trilateral framework. Article 2 states that Israel will be enabled to redeploy outside of Lebanon after Hezbollah has been fully disarmed in the country, while Article 3 states that the two sides have agreed to pilot zones from which Israel will withdraw and the LAF will take over. The framework does not clarify how the two logics would play out. Much will depend, of course, on what the U.S. position will be at the talks—and whose summit, Aoun’s or Netanyahu’s, swayed Trump the most.

Pilot Zones in Context

Meanwhile, the implementation of the first pilot zone area is proceeding apace. The zone consists of one town north of the Litani river, Zawtar al Gharbiyah, that was occupied by Israel but from which it has withdrawn, and two towns south of the Litani, Froun and Srifa, which were already outside Israel’s areas of occupation. The LAF has deployed to all three towns and has begun the work of removing unexploded ordnance and other hazards, rounding up weapons and arms, removing the bodies of Hezbollah fighters, surveying first-order damages and needs, and generally securing the towns. Civilians from these towns have also been streaming back after their long displacement, and the local civilian sentiment toward the LAF has been overwhelmingly positive. Hezbollah, meanwhile, has remained critical of the entire pilot zones process and the trilateral framework.

The Lebanese state has been largely absent, in a meaningful strategic sense, from south Lebanon for over half a century. In the Cairo Agreement of 1969, the Lebanese state, under pressure from Gamal Abd al Nasser’s Egypt and other Arab states, effectively ceded sovereignty of the south to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). After the Israeli invasion of 1982 and the departure of the PLO, Iran, through the Assad regime in Syria, established Hezbollah as its strategic proxy in the south.

Until the election of President Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam in early 2025, the Lebanese state had gone along with this abandonment of sovereignty. The people of south Lebanon have paid the heaviest price for the exploitation of their towns and villages as areas of proxy conflict by outside powers, whether Arab or Iranian, and the Lebanese state must reverse its past practice of abandonment and reassume its strategic obligations in the south

The pilot zones represent a significant opportunity to rebuild state capacity and legitimacy, creating a credible process that could unlock more Israeli withdrawals in the future and weaken Hezbollah. But to be successful, these first pilot zones must offer a strong example, not only of Israeli withdrawal, LAF return, and an exile of Hezbollah; they must also demonstrate that as the state takes back an area, it brings with it not only real and lasting security, but also essential public services, rapid reconstruction, and the building of a safe, well-served, and thriving community.

This will require a whole-of-government approach from the Lebanese government, not just the LAF, to include the ministries of the interior, social affairs, energy, telecoms, education, and health. It also requires a whole-of-donor-community approach, such that after the LAF goes in, the state is able to come in with the requisite technical and financial support to show the formerly displaced community that opting for the state is not only an ideological and nationalist position, but also brings rapid, proven, and lasting life benefits. This will resonate widely among the displaced population of the south and will strengthen the government’s legitimacy with that community, weakening Hezbollah’s narrative and bolstering the state’s hand.

Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) would and should be very worried about such a potential process. It is important to note that for them, Israel—especially as it occupies part of Lebanon—has long been their sustaining enemy; it provides them with their raison d’être. A resurgent Lebanese state in positive engagement with its own community, providing the security and public goods that the state had not provided effectively before, is Hezbollah’s existential adversary, and one that gives it—pardon the expression—its raison de disparaître.

Indeed, the flip side of Hezbollah’s presence is the state’s absence. Had the state not ceded sovereignty of the south those many decades ago, no foreign or foreign-backed group would have gained purchase there, nor dragged Lebanon and the people of the south into the decades of suffering that they have experienced. In that sense, the rebuilding of the state and its credible engagement with its people, especially those of the south, and the weakening and disarming of Hezbollah are not to be understood sequentially, but as processes that should proceed in parallel.

The more that Lebanon takes its responsibilities seriously and provides the security and public goods that are expected of a state, the more Hezbollah’s narrative is undermined and the more the state will be able to marginalize and move against it. The state cannot be “everything, everywhere, all at once”; it must rebuild capacity, step by step and region by region. The pilot zones are an excellent proving ground for that.

Israel must also make a choice: Does it want the pilot zones to be a success that leads toward the strengthening of the Lebanese state and the weakening of Hezbollah, or does it want to keep the Lebanese state weak and unable to gain legitimacy in the south, thus ensuring long-lasting fertile ground for Hezbollah and the IRGC?

Security Imperatives

This is not to say that the hard security goals in implementing these first pilot zones are to be minimized or overtaken by socio-economic and governance goals. The LAF and the Lebanese government did a great disservice to the citizens of the south by not fully eliminating the Hezbollah presence south of the Litani during the implementation of the November 2024 agreement. It is true that the Lebanese government did not give the LAF the legal ability to enter homes and remove Hezbollah weapons sites or fighting facilities if they were found. It is also true that the LAF did not have sufficient resources or time—in the few months between the September 2025 government approval of the deployment plan and the beginning of the U.S.-Israel war against Iran in late February 2026—to check every valley and mountaintop in that fairly large area.

Nevertheless, going somewhat soft on Hezbollah created a dangerous cover for Israel’s actions and has devastated the people of southern Lebanon. Therefore, the LAF and the government’s obligation as they take over the first pilot villages is to make absolutely sure that there are no IRGC or Hezbollah weapons, depots, or armed fighters in these zones, nor are they able to return to them. This is, first and foremost, not to satisfy Israel, but to provide long-term security for the citizens of those towns. This will require decisions from other branches of the Lebanese government that need to give the LAF legal permission to enter homes where depots are suspected, as well as government decisions or guidance as to who will be allowed or not allowed back to these villages—for example, whether an unarmed citizen who is a member of Hezbollah can return. The United States and Israel, for their part, must guarantee that Israel will not conduct strikes of any kind in or on those villages once the villages are proven to be fully under Lebanese government and LAF control and free of any Hezbollah presence.

Conclusion: A Test of Strategy and Political Will

The Rome talks are about far more than ceasefire implementation, pilot zones, or technical security arrangements. They represent a test of whether Lebanon can begin reversing more than half a century of state retreat and reclaim the strategic initiative in its own territory.

The first pilot zones have demonstrated that another model is possible: Israeli withdrawal, the deployment of the LAF, the return of civilians, and the gradual restoration of state authority. But these initial successes remain fragile. The Lebanese government, for its part, must show that sovereignty means more than declarations. It must provide security, reconstruction, public services, and a credible long-term vision for the people of the south, supported by allies and partners in the region and around the world. And Israel must decide whether it genuinely seeks a stronger Lebanese state or prefers to preserve the conditions that have long sustained Hezbollah.

Ultimately, the success or failure of the Rome process will depend less on what is signed at the negotiating table and more on what is built on the ground. If the pilot zones become islands of security, prosperity, and effective governance, they could become the foundation of a broader national recovery. If they fail, the region could quickly slide back into the familiar and destructive cycle of occupation, armed confrontation, and war. The choice facing Lebanon, Israel, and their international partners is therefore not simply between escalation and de-escalation. It is between perpetuating the politics of permanent conflict or investing in the slow but indispensable work of rebuilding a sovereign Lebanese state.

Paul Salem is a senior associate (non-resident) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.