What is Hezbollah?

Don’t Panic ... Your War Questions Answered

“Hot Hezbo Action,” the newest chapter in the long-running Arab-Israeli War, began July 12.

That morning, a group of Hezbollah fighters snuck across Lebanon’s border into northern Israel. Armed with explosives and anti-tank missiles, they attacked a group of Israeli soldiers patrolling the border in two armored jeeps. Three of the Israeli soldiers in the patrol were killed, three were wounded, and two were kidnapped and taken back across the border into Lebanon. Since the initial border raid, Hezbollah has also launched several hundred rockets and missiles into Israel. Eight Israeli civilians have been killed in the attacks and several more wounded.

Israel has responded on a large scale. In an effort to keep Hezbollah from moving the captured Israeli soldiers around or out of Lebanon, Israel has destroyed several key Lebanese roads and bridges. The runways and fuel depot at Lebanon’s airport in Beirut have been destroyed, and its coastline blockaded. Israel has attacked Lebanon’s power grid, leaving the southern half of the country (the part of Lebanon that borders Israel) without electricity. Additionally, Israeli jets have attacked numerous targets that they categorize as Hezbollah-related, including the homes, offices and media outlets belonging to Hezbollah forces. In the attacks, 179 Lebanese have been killed, all but 13 of whom were civilians.

What is Hezbollah?

Hezbollah is a religious and nationalist movement founded in Lebanon shortly after Israel invaded the country in 1982. Israel invaded to stop Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization he led at the time from using Lebanon as the base for its operations against Israel.

At the time, Lebanon was also mired in a brutal, sectarian civil war of its own, fought mainly between Christians, Shi’ite Muslims, Sunni Muslims and Druze (a millennium-old offshoot of Islam).

Hezbollah was formed by Shi’ite Lebanese in southern Lebanon. The name Hezbollah means “Party of God” in Arabic.

Early Hezbians professed several goals. First, they wanted to kick out Israelis and other foreign invaders from Lebanon. They wanted to destroy Israel on behalf of Palestinians (who, by the way, are predominantly Sunni and Christian). And they wanted to establish a Shi’ite Islamic Republic in Lebanon, much like the one established a couple of years earlier in Iran by the Ayatollah Khomeini.

With the help of advisers and buckets of cash from Iran’s government, Hezbollah quickly became an effective and feared militia, capable of mounting deadly attacks on Israeli forces and rival Lebanese militias.

Hezbollah also became a feared terrorist organization. The group is blamed for the October 1983 suicide bombings on American and French barracks in Beirut that killed 241 American servicemen and 58 French paratroopers. The Americans and French were part of a U.N. peacekeeping team.

Hezbo attacks on Israel followed by Israeli military offensives are nothing new. In 1993, Israel launched Operation Accountability, an air and naval bombardment of Lebanon in response to rocket attacks. In 1996, Israel responded to Hezbollah rocket attacks with Operation Grapes of Wrath. Though both attacks dealt tactical blows to Hezbollah, they amounted to little more than temporary setbacks.

The Hezbians count as their greatest victory Israel’s complete withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. Since 1978, Israel had occupied a buffer zone inside the Lebanese border to prevent cross-border attacks. Since then, Hezbollah has moved its operations right up to the Israeli border, as well as more closely allying itself with Hamas and other militants in Gaza and West Bank.

Will the current Israeli offensive destroy Hezbollah’s fighting ability? Probably not. Israeli occupation of Lebanon didn’t stop Hezbollah from forming in the first place. It’s idiotic to think that another occupation will destroy it. Hezbollah will no doubt take a nasty beating, but as long as its ideologies (militant Islam and Arab nationalism), foreign backers (Iran and Syria) and archenemy (an Israel that occupies West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem) remain, it will fight on.