Like thousands here in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, I was jolted awake just before 3 a.m. Monday morning by the unmistakable sounds of explosions resulting from Israeli air strikes. Hezbollah had launched a salvo of missiles and drones into Israel, supposedly in solidarity with the slain Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Now Israel was retaliating. Lebanon had once again been plunged into a war that had nothing to do with its national interests, by a militia group that has retained a private army and run its own foreign policy for decades. The Lebanese people are used to this dynamic. What happened after the Israeli strike, however, was surprising. Following an emergency cabinet meeting on Monday, the government declared that Hezbollah's military activities were illegal and therefore banned. The military was instructed to confiscate the organization's weapons. The government had never confronted Hezbollah this directly before'not when Hezbollah was formed, following the 1982...
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