Hezbollah: It All Began 40 Years Ago

By Henry Srebrnik [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The militant Shia militia Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, now has more than 150,000 missiles and rockets aimed at Israel. A war, which would cause incalculable destruction in Lebanon, as well as massive damage to Israel, seems almost inevitable.

Hezbollah is aided by Iran, which already virtually controls Iraq and Syria. It operates weapons production facilities in Lebanon, manufacturing guided missiles and drones that can carry explosive charges. 

The group’s Iranian backers plan to create arsenals for precision missile batteries that pose a strategic threat to Israel.

Hezbollah, which has played an important role in preserving the Assad regime in Syria, now has thousands of battle-hardened veterans.

Although Hezbollah’s intervention there did exact a heavy price in casualties, its position in Lebanon has not weakened, and the general elections in Lebanon in May 2018 will likely strengthen its political status.

Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah has not been shy in boasting that his Shia movement now calls the shots – literally -- in the fractured Lebanese state, having pushed its once-prominent Christian, Druze, and Sunni political rivals to the sidelines.

The sequence of events that led to this existential threat to the Jewish state began 40 years ago, at a time when Israel’s border with Lebanon, a small and weak country, was relatively quiet.

On March 11, 1978, the worst single act of terrorism on Israeli soil since independence resulted in the deaths of 38 Israelis, including 13 children. Another 71 were wounded.

The coastal road massacre, as it came to be known, began when Palestinian terrorists, slipping ashore from the Mediterranean, hijacked two buses along Israel’s main coastal highway from Haifa to Tel Aviv, shooting along the way at everyone in sight, before it ended in a firefight with Israeli police.

The resultant furore led to Operation Litani. On March 15, Israel launched an attack against Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) bases in southern Lebanon. It killed approximately 1,100 people, most of them Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. 

Israel now became militarily embroiled in Lebanon. Though Israeli forces withdrew, they turned over their positions inside Lebanon to their ally, the South Lebanon Army (SLA), a largely Christian militia.

Israel launched another, far greater, invasion of Lebanon on June 6, 1982, after repeated attacks and counter-attacks between its forces and the PLO. 

Though the PLO was expelled, Israel continued to operate a “security zone” in the south until 2000. The depth of this zone varied between five and twenty kilometres. 

The number of Israeli soldiers deployed ranged between 1,000 and 1,500. But fifteen years of armed conflict, especially with the newly-formed Hezbollah, weakened Israeli resolve and sapped the public’s support for the occupation. 

By the time the last Israeli soldiers left southern Lebanon May 24, 2000, Israel had lost 1,216 soldiers in combat since 1982; of these 559 were killed while Israel occupied the security zone after 1985. The SLA was crushed and Hezbollah quickly gained control of southern Lebanon.

The second Lebanon war broke out in 2006 and lasted 34 days, after Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers along the border. 

Israel suffered 121 military deaths, but 44 civilians in Israel were killed by Hezbollah rocket attacks. Another 1,500 people were wounded in rocket attacks in northern Israel, and 450 soldiers were hurt in the fighting in Lebanon. 

Some 300,000 Israelis fled their homes to escape rocket attacks on northern Israel. Israeli economists estimated direct war damage at $3.5 billion.

Israel started building a new wall along its border with Lebanon last month. It won’t stop a new conflict with Hezbollah, a battle which may herald a larger Middle East war involving Iran and Syria as well. It will make 2006 seem like a garden party.