President Donald Trump said that Hamas “is going to disarm” but if they don’t the US would act to disarm them “quickly and perhaps violently.” Trump declined to elaborate or to explain how the group would disarm a day after the Gaza peace deal was signed.
Published On 14 Oct 202514 Oct 2025
Share
BEIRUT — Saudi Arabia and Qatar are ready to invest in an economic zone in south Lebanon near the border with Israel that would create jobs for members of the militant Hezbollah group and its supporters once they lay down their weapons, President Trump’s envoy to the Middle East said Tuesday.
Tom Barrack made his comments in Beirut after trips to Israel and Syria where he discussed with officials there the ongoing situation in Lebanon following this month’s decision by the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah by the end of the year. Hezbollah’s leader rejected the government’s plan, vowing to keep the weapons.
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces could begin withdrawing from territory they hold in southern Lebanon after the Lebanese government’s “momentous decision” to disarm Hezbollah.
The U.S.-backed Lebanese army is preparing a plan for Hezbollah’s disarmament that should be ready by the end of August. The government is expected to discuss the army’s plan and approve it during a meeting scheduled for Sept. 2.
“We have to have money coming into the system. The money will come from the Gulf,” Barrack told reporters after meeting President Joseph Aoun. “Qatar and Saudi Arabia are partners and are willing to do that for the south (of Lebanon) if we’re asking a portion of the Lebanese community to give up their livelihood.”
“We have 40,000 people that are being paid by Iran to fight. What are you gonna do with them? Take their weapon and say ‘by the way, good luck planting olive trees’? It can’t happen. We have to help them,” Barrack said. He was referring to tens of thousands of Hezbollah members who have been funded since the early 1980s by Tehran.
“We, all of us, the Gulf, the U.S., the Lebanese are all gonna act together to create an economic forum that is gonna produce a livelihood,” Barrack said.
When asked why the U.S. doesn’t go to discuss the Hezbollah issue directly with Iran rather than traveling to Israel and Syria, Barrack said: “You think that’s not happening? Goodbye.” Barrack then ended his news conference and walked out of the room.
Speaking on the U.N. peacekeeping force that has been deployed in south Lebanon since Israel first invaded the country in 1978, Barrack said the U.S. would rather fund the Lebanese army than the force that is known as UNIFIL. Speaking about this week’s vote at the United Nations in New York, Barrack said the U.S. backs extending UNIFIL’s term for one year only.
A low-level conflict between Israel and Hezbollah started a day after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack against Israel from Gaza, when Hezbollah began launching rockets across the border in support of its Palestinian ally. The conflict escalated into war in September 2024 and left more than 4,000 people dead, and caused destruction worth $11 billion in Lebanon, according to the World Bank.
The war ended in November with a U.S.-brokered ceasefire and since then Hezbollah says it has ended its presence along the border area. Israel has continued almost daily airstrikes that have killed dozens of Hezbollah members.
Amnesty International in a report released Tuesday said it had identified more than 10,000 buildings that were “heavily damaged or destroyed” in southern Lebanon between October 2024 and January this year.
Israeli forces remained in much of the border area for weeks after the ceasefire agreement went into effect and are still holding five strategic points.
Amnesty’s report alleged that Israeli forces may have violated international law by destroying civilian property in areas they were controlling with “manually laid explosives and bulldozers” after the active fighting had ended and there was no longer an “imperative military necessity.”
At the start of the joint news conference with U.S. envoy Morgan Ortagus, Barrack warned journalists at the presidential palace to be quiet, telling them to “act civilized, act kind, act tolerant.” He threatened to end the conference early otherwise.
“The moment that this starts becoming chaotic, like animalistic, we’re gone,” said Barrack. He then asked: “Do you think this is economically beneficial for Morgan and I to be here putting up with this insanity?”
None of the journalists present responded to his comments but the Lebanese press syndicate issued a statement about the “inappropriate treatment” that the Lebanese journalists were subjected to and called on Barrack and the State Department to apologize. It added that if no apology were made, it could escalate by calling for boycotting Barrack’s visits and meeting.
The Presidential Palace also issued a statement regretting the comments made by “one of our guests” and greeted journalists who cover news at the palace, thanking them for their “hard work.”
Mroue and Chehayeb write for the Associated Press. AP writer Abby Sewell contributed to this report.
Israel warned ‘there will be no calm in Beirut’ after launching its largest attack on the Lebanese capital since the ceasefire.
The Israeli military will continue to bomb Lebanon if Hezbollah is not disarmed, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz has warned, saying “there will be no calm in Beirut” and “no order or stability in Lebanon” unless Israel’s security is assured.
“Agreements must be honoured, and if you do not do what is required, we will continue to act, and with great force,” the Israeli minister said in a Friday statement.
Israel’s military launched a series of strikes targeting Beirut’s southern suburbs on Thursday night, sending huge numbers of residents fleeing their homes on the eve of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday after issuing a forced evacuation order an hour earlier.
Israel claimed, without providing evidence, that its latest attack was launched against Hezbollah “drone factories” in the Lebanese capital.
The Israeli military said Hezbollah was “operating to increase production of UAVs [drones] for the next war” with Israel in “blatant violation” of the terms of November’s ceasefire.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that Israeli fighter jets had carried out about a dozen strikes in the attack. A Hezbollah statement said a preliminary assessment showed nine buildings had been destroyed, while dozens of others were damaged.
Hezbollah also denied there were drone production facilities in the targeted locations.
The Israeli attack was the fourth, and heaviest, carried out targeting Beirut’s southern suburbs – a Hezbollah stronghold – since the ceasefire ended hostilities on November 27.
Israel’s last attack on the Lebanese capital, in which it claimed to destroy “infrastructure where precision missiles” were being stored by Hezbollah, came in late April.
Across Lebanon, Israel has violated the ceasefire on a near-daily basis in the seven months since it was signed, according to the Lebanese government of President Joseph Aoun, Arab nations and human rights groups.
Aoun has appealed to the United States and France, guarantors of the November ceasefire, to rein in Israel’s attacks.
Speaking late on Thursday, Aoun voiced “firm condemnation of the Israeli aggression”, labelling the attacks a “flagrant violation of an international accord … on the eve of a sacred religious festival”.
On Friday, Ali Ammar, a Hezbollah lawmaker, urged “all Lebanese political forces … to translate their statements of condemnation into concrete action”, including diplomatic pressure.
In the months since the ceasefire, Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed at least 190 people and wounded nearly 500 more, the Lebanese government said in April.
Under the ceasefire agreement, the Lebanese military has been tasked with disarming Hezbollah – a political party and paramilitary group once believed to be more heavily armed than the state.
But following Thursday’s attack, Lebanon’s army warned that such attacks are weakening its role in the ceasefire. It added that Israel rejected its proposal to inspect the alleged drone production sites in southern Beirut in order to prevent an air strike.
“The Israeli enemy violations of the deal and its refusal to respond to the committee is weakening the role of the committee and the army,” the military said in a statement.
It added that continued Israeli attacks could lead the army to freeze its cooperation with the monitoring committee “when it comes to searching posts” and dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure near the Israeli border in southern Lebanon.
The war between Israel and Hezbollah re-erupted in the wake of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023, as the Lebanese group launched cross-border attacks on northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas.
Subsequent Israeli attacks on Lebanon killed more than 4,000 people, including hundreds of civilians, before the ceasefire was signed. Hezbollah rocket fire in Israel killed a reported 87 Israeli military personnel and 46 civilians.