Lebanese Shi'ites Split On Hezbollah Arms In New Survey
Statistics Lebanon found 66.4% of 800 Shi'ite respondents favor transferring the group's weapons to state control, while 29.6% want Hezbollah to retain them.
By Elijah Fitzgerald ·
Two-thirds of Lebanese Shi'ites want Hezbollah to hand its weapons to the state, according to a Statistics Lebanon survey of 800 Shi'ite respondents conducted in September. The results, reported in mid-October by Israel's public broadcaster KAN and the Kataeb Party website Kataeb.org, showed 66.4% backing a transfer of the arsenal to Lebanese state control against 29.6% who said Hezbollah should keep the weapons.
The same poll found 71.1% of respondents said war and peace decisions belong solely to the Lebanese state. Only 5.9% said Hezbollah's leadership should have a larger role in shaping the country's future. Trust in the Lebanese Armed Forces reached 78.5%, with 51.1% naming the army as the institution best placed to guarantee long-term security and 16.5% picking Hezbollah.
The survey also recorded divided views on Hezbollah's conduct. Some 67.4% said the group failed to meet its goals in the war with Israel or achieved only some of them, while 42.1% expressed disappointment, anger or concern about its leadership and the conflict's consequences. Even so, 59.5% reported some trust in Hezbollah, including 37.1% who said they had a great deal of trust.
A May 2026 survey by Lebanon's Information International, cited by researchers Orna Mizrahi and Moran Levanoni in a June 10 analysis for Israel's Institute for National Security Studies, pointed the opposite way. That poll found 87.5% of Shi'ite respondents opposed disarming Hezbollah and 7.9% supported giving up its weapons. Mizrahi and Levanoni wrote that Hezbollah's influence rests on its social and economic networks, its political power and the historical marginalization of Lebanon's Shi'ites, and said intimidation has discouraged dissent within the community.
In the southern city of Tyre, property owners reportedly opposed opening a branch of the Hezbollah-linked financial institution Al-Qard Al-Hassan in their building, fearing it could be targeted in an Israeli strike, according to KAN. Hezbollah has announced aid of up to $14,000 for eligible families in Beirut and its southern suburbs whose primary homes were destroyed, and up to $12,000 elsewhere. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in September 2024, and a new war broke out in March 2026, causing heavy destruction in southern Lebanese villages.
