On Oct. 8 last year, Hezbollah launched guided rockets and artillery shells at Israeli-occupied positions in Shebaa Farms during the 2023 Israel–Hamas war. Israel retaliated with drone strikes, and artillery fire on Hezbollah positions near the Golan Heights–Lebanon border. The attacks came after Hezbollah expressed support and praise for the Hamas attacks on Israel. The clashes have been the largest escalation between the two countries since the 2006 Lebanon War.
Hezbollah, an Iran-backed force will be a lethal foe, even with the pounding by the Israeli Defense Force, as the bulk of the Lebanese group’s capabilities remains intact, and maneuvering Israel’s ground, air, and naval troops will have to contend with anti-tank missiles, mines, and drones — not to mention tunnels.
The ideology of Hezbollah has been summarized as Shi’i radicalism, which says that its continued hostilities against Israel are justified as reciprocal to Israeli operations against Lebanon, and as retaliation for what they claim is Israel’s occupation of Lebanese territory
After the Iranian Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979, Lebanese clerics established Hezbollah primarily to fight the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, thus, close ties have developed between Iran and Hezbollah.
The organization was created with the support of 1,500 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps instructors, and aggregated a variety of Lebanese Shia groups into a unified organization.
Hezbollah articulated its ideology in a 1985 manifesto, published during the Lebanese Civil War, which outlined the group’s key goals: the expulsion of Western influences, the destruction of Israel, allegiance to Iran’s supreme leader, and the establishment of an Iran-influenced Islamist government, while emphasizing Lebanese self-determination.
Described as a “state within a state”, Hezbollah has grown into an organization with seats in the Lebanese government, a radio and satellite TV station, social services, and large-scale military deployment of fighters beyond Lebanon’s borders.
Since 1990, it has participated in Lebanese politics, in a process which is described as the Lebanonization of Hezbollah, and it later participated in the government of Lebanon, and joined political alliances.
After the 2006–08 Lebanese protests and clashes, a national unity government was formed in 2008, with Hezbollah and its opposition allies. [In August 2008, Lebanon’s new cabinet unanimously approved a policy statement that recognizes Hezbollah’s existence as an armed organization, and guarantees its right to liberate or recover occupied lands (such as the Shebaa Farms).
Hezbollah waged an asymmetric war using suicide attacks against IDF and Israeli targets outside of Lebanon, and is reputed to have been among the first Islamic resistance groups in the Middle East to use the tactics of suicide bombing, assassination, the capture of foreign soldiers, as well as murders and hijackings.
Its militants have employed more conventional military tactics and weaponry, notably Katyusha rockets and other missiles.
At the end of the Lebanese Civil War in 1990, despite the Taif Agreement asking for the disbanding of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias, Syria (which controlled Lebanon at that time) allowed Hezbollah to maintain its arsenal, and control of Shia areas along the border with Israel.
Let us pray for peace.
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