The Origins of Hezbollah

An analysis of the history, the present, and future Israeli military action 

Andrew Fox 

 

 

In the past couple of days, we have seen a deluge of reports that an Israeli attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon is imminent. Hezbollah has been escalating assaults on Israel. Since 7th October, and prior to any Israeli response in Gaza, more than 6,000 rockets have been fired at Israel from Hezbollah in Lebanon. More than 60,000 Israelis remain displaced from their homes. The IDF have struck over 8,500 targets within Lebanon itself, killing more than 460 Hezbollah operatives. The IDF have incurred 18 fatalities, and 7 Israeli citizens have died. Potential IDF ground incursions into Lebanon itself bring with them the fear of regional escalation—but how imminent is the IDF response? This article examines the history of the conflict and future possibilities and risks.

How did we get here? Let us start at the beginning. As ever with the Middle East, it is convoluted and complex.

After Israel’s victory in the 1948 war, Lebanon became home to 110,000 displaced Arabs who had previously lived in the Palestinian Mandate. These 110,000 were further supplemented by refugees from Jordan between 1970 and 1975, after the Jordanian civil war between King Hussein’s forces and Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). The PLO was founded by Yasser Arafat in 1964, and from the late 1960s onwards were heavily weaponised by the Soviet Union as a vector for undermining US influence in the Middle East. From 1975, the PLO were able to create a ‘state within a state’ within Lebanon itself, radicalising the 400,000 Arab refugees now living there.

 

 

From 1975 onwards, the Southern Lebanon region saw violence on both sides between Israel and the PLO. In 1978, Palestinian Arab militants committed the Coastal Road Massacre. They hijacked a bus on Israel’s Coastal Road near Tel Aviv, murdering 38 people, including 13 children, and wounding a further 76.

This sparked an Israeli military response: Operation Litani, a seven day mission in March 1978, which saw the deaths over 1,000 Lebanese and Palestinian Arabs, and the internal displacement of over 100,000 people within Lebanon itself. It was a victory for the Israelis: the PLO were forced to withdraw from Southern Lebanon. It prompted UN Security Council resolutions to mandate Israeli withdrawal, and established the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). UNIFIL continues today, numbering some 10,000 troops from 49 countries.

The Lebanese Civil War continued in a variety of forms between 1975 and 1990. Over that period and ever since, alliances and actors have shifted, changed and mutated; interference from Middle Eastern neighbours has been varied. The UN estimates 150,000 people were killed. I would urge you to study this conflict in more detail to understand where we are today, as I do not have space to break down the complexity in one article. However, the main feature throughout has been the demographic imbalance caused by Palestinian Arab refugees and their conflict with Israel. This destabilised the country; Israel attacked in response to Lebanon-based Palestinian Arab terrorism; and Hezbollah was formed to counter Israeli attacks.

Hezbollah came to life after the Israeli-Lebanese war in 1982. This war was sparked by Fatah’s assassination attempt on Israel’s ambassador to the UK, on the back of a series of back-and-forth attacks by the PLO and their allies and the IDF in Southern Lebanon. The bulk of the fighting was over in 4 months. Having been surrounded in Beirut and under threat from IDF artillery, through the UN Special Envoy, the PLO were able to negotiate their evacuation to Tripoli in Libya.

A pro-Israeli government was briefly installed. However, Lebanon’s President Gemayel was assassinated by a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party in September 1982. The Sabra and Shatila massacre by Israeli-backed Phalangists (Gemayel’s faction) later that month led to widespread condemnation, and under both international and domestic pressure to end the war, Israel gradually withdrew to Southern Lebanon by 1985. 

Hezbollah, then, is a Lebanese Shia group, closely aligned with Iran. Backed by Khomeini and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the start, as mentioned, they were formed to fight Israel in the 1982 war. Between 1982 and 1985 Hezbollah pulled together a variety of Shia insurgent groups under one banner. To be clear, they are not a Palestinian Arab grouping within Lebanon: they are Lebanese. They have participated in Lebanese politics since 1992 and today remain a powerful political actor within Lebanon itself.

Militarily, they have used traditional terrorist tactics of suicide bombings, hijackings, assassinations and hostage-taking with the specific aim of freeing Lebanon from Israeli influence provoked by Palestinian Arab terrorism. Since 1995, the USA have designated them a terrorist organisation. Hezbollah operate a global criminal network, with hubs in Latin America and Africa. In 2022, Europol reported their suspicions that Hezbollah facilitates the flow of illegal narcotics, money-laundering and firearms into EU countries.

In 2006, a complex cross-border attack on IDF forces in Northern Israel prompted the Second Lebanon War. Israel retaliated with air strikes and artillery, a ground invasion, and a blockade. Up to a million people were displaced, over 1,000 killed, and Lebanon’s civil infrastructure was severely damaged in a month-long conflict. After this UN Security Council 1701 mandated both Israeli and Hezbollah withdrawal from Southern Lebanon, with the Litani river as the line Hezbollah should not cross.

 

 

This war was a failure to defeat Hezbollah and fully secure Israel’s northern border, a failure emphasised by the attacks since 7th October. Neither the Lebanese government nor UNIFIL have the ability to disarm Hezbollah: they are far too strong. Hezbollah has partnership with their fellow Iranian proxies in Yemen, the Houthis, who have sparked a civil war in Yemen which has led to the deaths of nearly 400,000 people through war and famine. They have fought in the Syrian civil war on the side of Basher Al Assad as well as facilitating the flow of arms to his forces. The death toll in this latter conflict sits at over 600,000 people.

All of which brings us to the situation today.

Hezbollah are believed to have amassed an arsenal of 150,000 rockets in Southern Lebanon, all capable of striking within Israel itself. IDF troops on the northern front have faced missile and suicide drone attacks. Hezbollah have built a tunnel network that puts Hamas’ in Gaza to shame, dug into the solid chalk of the sloped and wooded area.

This presents a strong danger to Israel if and when they retaliate with a ground invasion against Hezbollah’s aggression. Not only are Hezbollah better fighters than Hamas, hardened in combat from their time in Syria, but the size of their missile arsenal presents the potential to overwhelm Israel’s anti-missile defences.

There is a wider risk of regional escalation, too. Iran now has proxies in not only Yemen and Lebanon, but now also in Iraq, where Iranian-backed militias comprise a force equal in size to the Iraqi Army. Following an attack on Hezbollah, Yemen could attempt to increase their blockade of Israel. Iraqi militias could attack not only Israel itself but also Western forces in the region (as they have already).

With 60,000+ people displaced in Israel, and Hezbollah escalating their missile attacks and humiliating the Israelis with drone overflights of key military infrastructure in Haifa, what else can Israel do? Hezbollah must be defeated and deterred. As with Gaza, Israel is backed into a strategic corner where they are forced to take action, possibly to their detriment.

However, there are options on the table to mitigate some of these threats. Firstly, let us examine the wider strategic picture. All these attacks on Israel are interlinked. The Iranian regime aims to ratchet up international pressure on Israel. They have provoked the military reaction they sought after 7th October, and have used the resulting violence and damage, and humanitarian crisis, to draw unprecedented international criticism of Israel.

Hezbollah exploited the 7th October attacks to escalate their attacks on Israel, knowing that IDF ground forces were occupied elsewhere. The Iranian regimen have tried to stop international shipping using the Houthis and have attacked American forces in Iraq through their militias. This is all to degrade US influence in the Gulf, and Saudi Arabia’s with it, with the eventual aim of destroying Israel and establishing total Iranian Islamic regime dominance within the region.

Therefore, it is very much in the US and the West’s interests to facilitate Israeli victory. Complexity is added by the effectiveness of the Qatari-Iranian disinformation campaign that has generated such international pressure against Israel in Western countries: especially in a tightly-contested US Presidential election year. Further Israeli military action will be a hard sell, and Iran are counting on this internal domestic election pressure to force President Biden to try and dissuade the Israelis from action. After November 2024, this pressure will lift. Israel have a calculus to make: go it publicly alone, with minimal Western backing; or only attack Hezbollah in force after the Presidential election, and hope for a more full-throated version of Western support—whilst all that time, Israelis remain unable to return to their homes. As a result, pressure on the domestic front will be immense.

So, what might that Western support look like and how might Israel mitigate Hezbollah’s strengths and the threats of regional escalation? Firstly, nothing should happen without a US carrier group in the Mediterranean. This will be essential for interdiction of attempted Houthi and Hezbollah blockades of Israel.

Secondly, international pressure should be strengthened against Iran. President Biden will need to eat humble pie and admit that Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal cancelled by Trump and re-instituted by him, has been a disaster that has emboldened Iran. The threat of its “snapback” (ie to pre-deal UN sanctions) must be leveraged to force Iran to back its proxies down.

Thirdly, Israel’s targeting must focus on Hezbollah missile capability. The 150,000 missiles are not the priority: their launchers are. This will require a massive aerial bombardment that will cause significant destruction and will inevitably draw further international condemnation of Israel. She and her allies must be prepared for this and have a counter-narrative firmly in place before any assault occurs.

Fourthly, Hezbollah’s command and control nodes must be targeted. Israel have been doing this with success since 7th October, but will need to continue.

Fifthly, Israel must have a clear plan for the aftermath. It has been the gaping flaw in their Gaza policy. They need to know how the Third Lebanon War ends: it cannot be allowed to bleed on as it did between 1982-85 or end in anything other than defeat of Hezbollah, as they failed to achieve in 2006.

Only then will conditions be set for a ground assault into Lebanon to secure Israel’s northern border. This is not the 1948, 1967, 1982 or 2006 wars. The world’s geopolitical picture has changed since then. Israel is surrounded: they have been before, but this time it is not just a military threat, but a global political one. The Third Lebanon War must be not only sharp, surgical, precise and with a clearly defined vision of victory, but also supported by an international campaign of support. Without all of these things, the strategic risks to Israel are dire and they face a long war of attrition—one for which the IDF is not designed.