According to the Oslo-based Peace Research Institute, 2023 was one of the most violent years since the end of the Cold War. A record number of 59 conflicts were recorded worldwide, 10 of them in the Middle East. None makes less sense than that between Hezbollah and Israel along the Lebanese border.
When antagonists resort to arms, they usually have an objective that only victory can achieve. For example Hamas, which regards itself as the Palestinians’ champion and Israel as illegitimate occupiers of Palestinian land, makes no secret of its desire to eliminate Israel and its Jewish citizens from the Middle East. The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’s bloodthirsty incursion into Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel, recognizing Hamas as a fanatic enemy hell-bent on its destruction, realizes that the organization must be totally disempowered if there is ever to be peace in the region. The motivation of the main protagonists is clear, and it is a fight in which the victory of one side is intended to lead to the obliteration of the other.
Why does Hezbollah's conflict with Israel make no sense?
The same cannot be said of Hezbollah’s armed interchanges with Israel across the Israel-Lebanon border. Once, more than 40 years ago, Hezbollah had a clear purpose in attacking Israel, but time and circumstances have eliminated it. As far as Hezbollah’s self-interest is now concerned – to say nothing of Lebanon’s – the current tit-for-tat armed conflict can yield nothing of value, beyond the approval of Hezbollah’s protector, Iran. It is perpetuating itself like an impossible-to-break routine.
Hezbollah was created as a consequence of the checkered history of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In June 1964, when the PLO was founded, Jordan was in possession of the whole of the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which it had captured in the 1948 war with Israel. It was entirely natural for the new organization to set up its headquarters in Jordan.
Three years later came the Six Day War. Israel regained the West Bank and east Jerusalem, and Jordan retreated to its own borders. So it was from within Jordan that the PLO began organizing terror attacks in Israel, while fedayeen militias began assaulting Israeli forces. Not unsurprisingly, Israel retaliated and began raiding the PLO camps inside Jordan. As a result, Israeli troops sometimes found themselves engaging the Jordanian military.
This was a situation that Jordan’s King Hussein found intolerable. He resented his kingdom becoming a battleground between the PLO and Israel. In fact, the PLO had grown over-mighty within Jordan, becoming a virtual state within the state. In September 1970, in an effort to reassert his authority, Hussein authorized an armed attack on the PLO (an event they dubbed “Black September”). The PLO responded with several failed assassination attempts on the Jordanian king and the hijacking of three airplanes. Civil war ensued, centered on whether Jordan was to be ruled by the Hashemite monarchy or the PLO. In July 1971 Hussein prevailed, and all the groups forming the PLO were expelled from Jordan.
Chairman Yasser Arafat decided to reposition his organization in hapless Lebanon, which has suffered more than its fair share of conflict and civil strife since it was founded as a modern state. With Lebanon as its new base, the PLO militias positioned themselves in the south and, relying on the support of the refugee camp Palestinians – well in excess of 100,000 – began mounting armed attacks on Israel and on Jewish targets worldwide.
For Israel, the final straw was an attack in 1982 by Lebanon-based Palestinian militants on a senior Israeli diplomat. In coordination with Lebanese Christian militias, Israel invaded Lebanon, which was in the midst of civil war. Israeli troops advanced up the country and soon reached Beirut. Once there, they captured PLO headquarters and ordered the PLO out of the country. Again, the PLO were forced to relocate – this time to Tunisia.
While occupying Beirut, Israel tried to negotiate a peace treaty with Lebanon, but internal civil strife finally made that impossible. So Israel retreated to the areas claimed by the Free Lebanon State in southern Lebanon. This later became Israel’s south Lebanon security belt.
It was Israel’s presence within Lebanese territory that led a group of Lebanese clerics to create Hezbollah. The new body modeled itself on the principles established by Ayatollah Khomeini after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and Khomeini is claimed to have chosen the name Hezbollah (“the party of God”) for them. The organization was created with the support of 1,500 IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) instructors, and welded a number of Lebanese Shia groups into a unified organization. Its clear purpose was to remove the Israeli presence from Lebanon.
A number of Islamic militias, which eventually united around Hezbollah, began launching guerrilla attacks on Israeli positions and on pro-Israel Lebanese militias. Israel often responded with airstrikes on Hezbollah military positions, and casualties on all sides steadily mounted. Questioning the benefit of the so-called security belt, Israel decided to withdraw.
On May 24, 2000, in late compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 425 originally issued in 1978, Israel vacated southern Lebanon entirely, pulling back to the international border. Hezbollah took over the whole area but continued carrying out terrorist attacks against Israeli civilian and military targets in northern Israel.
A cross-border raid it carried out on July 12, 2006, resulted in the death of eight Israeli soldiers and the abduction of two others, who died in captivity. It triggered what became known as the Second Lebanon War, fought over July and August 2006.
Under its Resolution 425, the UN had established a temporary international peacekeeping force it called UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon), to be positioned between the opposing forces in southern Lebanon and restore peace. Still operating today, 46 years on, it has clearly proven itself largely ineffective. It has failed to curtail Hezbollah’s continued attacks on Israel or to help Lebanon’s government and army regain control of the border. Its greatest strength has proven to be its own resilience and staying power. Today, with Hezbollah stronger than ever in southern Lebanon, UNIFIL comprises more than 10,000 soldiers from 49 nations..
Hanin Ghaddar, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, told the online news agency The Media Line that UNIFIL does not “possess the tools and permission from the UN to confiscate weapons or even arrest those affiliated with Hezbollah.... Hezbollah targets UNIFIL because they do not want another actor in the south. It is never an accident when UNIFIL personnel are targeted because the militant group aims to send a message both to the countries that serve in these forces and to the UN: Do not interfere with our activities in the southern part of the country.”
Avraham Levine of the Alma Research and Education Center told The Media Line that Hezbollah has more control over UNIFIL than UNIFIL does over Hezbollah.
If UNIFIL personnel chance to stray into Hezbollah’s territory, he said, “they are attacked on the spot, their vehicles are burnt, and sometimes they are even shot down.” He also claimed that Hezbollah has used UNIFIL bases for its military purposes.
In Hezbollah’s determination to control southern Lebanon completely, a political purpose can be perceived. Its impatience with UNIFIL’s presence, and especially with UNIFIL’s aim of empowering Lebanon’s government and armed forces in the region, are explicable. But since the best way to get rid of UNIFIL would be to stop attacking Israel, its continued and continuous military onslaught against Israel remains illogical.
Israel has long retreated from Lebanese soil, and while Israel does not approve of Hezbollah’s dominant political and military power within Lebanon, it does not challenge it. So Hezbollah has nothing to gain from its perpetual military confrontation with Israel. Beyond the approval of its sponsor, Iran, there is nothing in it for Hezbollah, and certainly not for Lebanon. In fact, the situation has descended into war for war’s sake. In short, Hezbollah’s fight with Israel is pointless. ■
The writer’s latest book is Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020. You can follow him at: www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com