The Calendar

Lebanese expatriates were scheduled to begin voting today. The elections were postponed. The disarmament plan designed to precede them continues. So does the war.

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Lebanese citizens living abroad were scheduled to begin voting today. The parliamentary elections, originally set for May 1 through May 10, were postponed on March 9 by a vote of 76 members of parliament, extending the current term by two years. The stated reason was the war.

The “Homeland Shield Plan” --- the five-phase disarmament roadmap General Rodolphe Haykal presented to the cabinet in September 2025 --- was designed around these elections. Five sectors. Three months per sector. Fifteen months total. The timeline was calibrated so that Hezbollah would not enter the electoral cycle with its arsenals intact. The first phase, covering the area south of the Litani River, was announced complete on January 8. The Lebanese Armed Forces collected weapons, established checkpoints, deployed across the south. It was the first time since 2006 that the Lebanese state exercised a monopoly on arms in that territory. Phase 1 happened. Hezbollah did not stand in the army’s way --- a tactical concession in a sector already devastated, where the strategic weapons had long since moved north.

On February 17, the government announced Phase 2: the area between the Litani and the Awali rivers, roughly forty kilometers south of Beirut. Four months, “extendable depending on available capabilities, Israeli attacks and hindrances on the ground.” Haykal told the cabinet it could take four to eight months. Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Naim Qassem, responded the same day: “What the Lebanese government is doing in focusing on disarmament is a grave sin, because this issue serves the goals of the Israeli aggression.” He added: “Stop all action to restrict weapons.”

Thirteen days later, on March 2, the war resumed.

The sequence matters. Phase 1 was completed inside the November 2024 ceasefire. That agreement had, for several months, created the security conditions the plan required --- imperfect, contested, but functional enough for the LAF to operate. Phase 2 was announced thirteen days before those conditions were destroyed. The announcement set a four-month timeline for a sector the LAF cannot currently reach, in a country where every bridge crossing the Litani has since been destroyed by Israeli strikes, 62,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed, and 2,496 people have been killed since March 2.

The Phase 2 timeline has not been retracted. It has not been suspended. It has not been revised. It continues as an official government position while the territory it covers is under bombardment.

On March 9, one week after the war resumed, parliament postponed the elections by two years. The disarmament plan designed to precede those elections lost its destination. The institutional calendar shed its endpoint. The phases continue toward a political event that no longer exists on any calendar.

The military calendar runs on different units. On April 8, Israel launched what it described as its “most powerful attacks” on Lebanon, killing at least 357 people in a single day. On April 16, a ten-day ceasefire was brokered by the United States. On April 23, Trump extended it by three weeks, to May 17. On April 27, Qassem stated that Hezbollah would not “relinquish its weapons or its defenses.” He called the Lebanese government’s negotiations with Israel “a gratuitous and humiliating concession.”

Two days later, IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir visited troops posted in southern Lebanon and stated: “There is no ceasefire.” Troops continue to fight “to remove direct and indirect threats from the northern communities, to thwart terror infrastructure, to locate and kill terrorists.”

The same week, President Joseph Aoun responded to Qassem: “What we are doing is not treason. Rather, treason is committed by those who take their country to war to achieve foreign interests.”

Three positions, stated within seventy-two hours, inside a ceasefire one belligerent’s commanding general says does not exist. The disarmament plan the president defends requires the ceasefire the IDF chief denies. The weapons the plan would collect are the ones Qassem says will not be surrendered. The ceasefire that does not exist expires on May 17. If no permanent agreement is reached by then, Israel has reportedly asked for Trump’s approval to launch an expanded military campaign.

Three calendars run in the same geography.

The institutional calendar: the Homeland Shield Plan, adopted September 2025. Phase 1, completed January 8. Phase 2, announced February 17. Five sectors, three months per sector, projected completion December 2026. This calendar produces phases, timelines, completion estimates. It divides the country into sectors and assigns months to each. It is formally correct. The LAF has the plan. The cabinet approved it. The timeline exists.

The military calendar: war resumed March 2. Major escalation April 8. Ceasefire April 16. Extension April 23. Expiry May 17. This calendar produces casualties, displacement orders, bridge demolitions. On April 30, NPR reported that Israel is destroying towns and villages in southern Lebanon “mirroring Gaza.” The territory Phase 1 disarmed is being demolished. The territory Phase 2 would cover is under bombardment.

The political calendar: elections scheduled May 1—10, postponed March 9 for two years. The calendar the plan was built around is now blank until 2028.

None of these calendars has stopped running. The institutional calendar continues producing announcements. The military calendar continues producing destruction. The political calendar continues not arriving. They occupy the same country. They run in different registers of what is happening.

I wrote in April about the interim --- twenty years of Resolution 1701, UNIFIL’s mandate ending, the architecture that was supposed to prevent exactly this. The Homeland Shield Plan was the next iteration: the framework that would succeed where 1701 failed, because this time the Lebanese state itself would execute disarmament rather than delegating to an international force.

Phase 1 is evidence it can work. The LAF deployed, collected weapons, established control. That was real. It happened inside specific conditions --- a functioning ceasefire, international support, Hezbollah’s tactical decision not to resist --- that existed for a few months and no longer do.

The plan continues not because anyone expects Phase 2 to execute on its announced timeline. It continues because its continuation serves every party’s narrative simultaneously. The Lebanese government demonstrates sovereignty by maintaining the plan. The United States demonstrates diplomatic progress by citing it. Israel demonstrates Hezbollah’s intransigence by pointing to its rejection. Hezbollah demonstrates the plan’s illegitimacy by pointing to the war.

The framework is not failing. It is functioning --- not as a disarmament mechanism, but as a calendar that everyone reads differently and nobody observes.

May 1. The date the voting was supposed to begin. The plan designed to precede it continues. The elections do not. The war does.

Sources

- Solen