https://arab.news/pt55f
As expected, Israel refused to fully withdraw from Lebanon on Feb. 18, leaving its forces in five border areas. Maintaining the occupation in this way is exactly the breath of life Hezbollah needs to revive itself.
On Feb. 23, Hezbollah held the funeral of its secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Sept. 27 last year. The funeral was an occasion for the group to show it still commanded strong support among the Shiite community.
Wafiq Safa, the official in charge of the group’s coordination and liaison unit, said a few weeks ago that Hezbollah would emerge stronger than it was before. He could be right. It was born out of the grievances caused by the Israeli invasion in 1982. Now, Israel has created enough hatred and pain to give the group exactly the boost it needs to rebuild itself.
Prior to withdrawing from the areas they did leave, Israeli forces made sure to burn the houses they had not already destroyed. Towns close to the border, such as Kfar Kela, were razed to the ground.
Southern Lebanon is an agrarian society; the people there make a living from the crops they farm. Israel bombed the south with phosphorus bombs to ensure those people would no longer be able to cultivate their land.
Israeli authorities are attempting to create an undeclared “no-man’s land,” a buffer zone along the border with Lebanon. They hope that because of all the destruction, people will be discouraged from returning home. Through this buffer zone and control of five strategic points along the border, Israel thinks it can guarantee the security of its settlements in Galilee.
In addition, the Israelis think that their presence within Lebanese borders means they will be able to move freely there and target anyone they want. A few days ago, for example, Israeli forces carried out a drone attack in Saida in which they assassinated a Hamas operative. Their reconnaissance and surveillance drones and planes can breach and roam Lebanese airspace as they please. From time to time, they fly at low altitude and break the sound barrier, creating fear and anxiety among the Lebanese people.
Why would they not? Israeli authorities see no restrictions on their actions. They can do whatever they want. They broke all international laws in Gaza and faced no repercussions, so why not in Lebanon?
However, the Israelis underestimate the urge this is fueling among the Lebanese to fight back, especially among Shiites, whose homes and land have been devastated. This is something Hezbollah, weakened as it is, can use to its advantage.
To fully understand the group’s fall, one should understand its rise. Hezbollah was created out of a need to fight an Israeli occupation. It evolved from small, random groups into a formidable, well-organized guerrilla force that could spread fear among the generals in Tel Aviv. Of course, its creation came three years after the Iranian revolution, and directly after the Israeli invasion of Beirut. The rise of Hezbollah was considered the first export of Iran’s revolution to the Arab world and it was successful mainly because of the indigenous need to fight the Israeli occupation.
For the sake of stability, Israel must withdraw and the Lebanese state must be strengthened.
Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib
After Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah lost its raison d’etre as a resistance organization. Following the withdrawal of Syrian forces in 2005, the group entered politics. Its members felt they had to because they had lost their Syrian sponsor. Political power represented a tool with which to protect their arms; they did not want a government in place they could not control, which might ask them to disarm in compliance with 2004’s UN Security Council Resolution 1559 and the 1989 Taif Agreement that ended the civil war in Lebanon.
In 2008, Hezbollah tightened its grip on the government through the Doha agreement, signed on May 21 that year, which was designed to end an 18-month political crisis during which the weapons the group had been pointing at the Israelis were turned on their fellow Lebanese.
On May 7, 2008, Hezbollah had taken Beirut by force. It became part of the country’s corrupt political structure. The arms that had been protecting Lebanon from Israeli aggression were now the main protectors of the political elite and their corruption.
The more the group’s legitimacy was eroded, the more brutal it became, domestically. It suppressed dissent, whether through assassinations or by crushing the public protests that erupted in 2019, demanding the dismantling of a corrupt political system.
The group had morphed from a clean resistance organization comprising a tight-knit group of dedicated people to a more mafia-like structure. It became involved in drug production and trafficking along with the Assad family. It started to become a conglomerate inside Lebanon. It owned a bank and various businesses. Somehow it began to mimic the corrupt Lebanese political system, and became its main patron.
As it expanded in the region, however, Hezbollah made too many enemies. While the group enjoyed some degree of Arab acquiescence while fighting Israel, it lost whatever legitimacy it had in the Arab world when it entered Syria and acted like a proxy of Iran as part of the latter’s quest for regional domination.
The Israeli attack on Hezbollah last year using booby-trapped pagers and other communication devices, and the wider recent war on Lebanon, were a wake-up call for the group and its surviving leaders. They realized they had overstretched themselves by interfering in other countries in the region.
The only way for Hezbollah to rebuild itself, then, is to return to its origins as an armed resistance to an Israeli occupation. The grievances in southern Lebanon are strong enough to fuel this project.
Wafiq Safa was not entirely wrong, therefore, when he predicted that Hezbollah would eventually emerge stronger than it was before. However, this would be a very dangerous development as it would lead to another war. The authorities in Israel at present are unhinged, buttressed by a permissive administration in the US. This means that if any resistance does arise, the response from the Israelis will be extremely destructive to Lebanon.
The US should be wise enough to realize that the continuing presence of Israeli forces in Lebanon, and their operations there with the aim of killing every member of Hezbollah, will only strengthen the group in the long run.
For the sake of stability, Israel must withdraw and the Lebanese state must be strengthened. If this is done, Hezbollah will eventually be decommissioned as an armed movement.
• Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib is a specialist in US-Arab relations with a focus on lobbying. She is co-founder of the Research Center for Cooperation and Peace Building, a Lebanese nongovernmental organization focused on Track II.