Fascist Killed in Lebanon

Not the headline you are going to see in the MSM. And before folks go blaming Syria, one must remember that the Gemayel family has many enemies in Lebanon. As the Guardian points out;

Pierre Gemayel, the anti-Syrian politician shot dead in Beirut today, came from one of Lebanon's most prominent political dynasties.

His grandfather - also called Pierre - founded the Phalange party, a Christian Maronite paramilitary youth organisation modelled on the fascist organisations he observed while in Berlin as an Olympic athlete in 1936.

During the 1975 Lebanese civil war, the Phalange party was the most formidable force within the Christian camp.

Its militia shouldered the brunt of the fighting against the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and, as part of the Lebanese Front - the mostly Christian, rightist coalition - the power of the Gemayel family increased considerably.

The Phalange were also the name of Franco's Fascists during the Spanish Civil War.

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Lebanon

Fascism


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Thousands of Lebanese mourn slain Christian political official

Byblos (Lebanon) (AFP) – Thousands of Lebanese on Friday mourned a slain Christian political official authorities said was killed by a Syrian gang, with supporters pointing the finger at Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah group.

Issued on: 12/04/2024 - 

Mourners and supporters of the Lebanese Forces wave their party's flag at Sleiman's funeral © Ibrahim CHALHOUB / AFP


Pascal Sleiman was a coordinator in the Byblos (Jbeil) area north of Beirut for the Lebanese Forces (LF) Christian party, which opposes the government in neighbouring Syria and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah.

On Monday, the army said that Sleiman, who had gone missing the day before, was killed in a carjacking by Syrian gang members who then took his body across the border.

His party said it would consider Sleiman's death a "political assassination until proven otherwise".

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has denied that his party was involved.

Speaking after Sleiman's funeral, LF leader Samir Geagea called for the "failed, corrupt" authorities in Lebanon to be changed.

Geagea blamed their failure, among other things, on "illegal weapons" -- a barely veiled reference to Hezbollah.

The Iran-backed group is the only party in Lebanon that has kept its weapons arsenal after the end of the 1975-1990 civil war, and it wields great influence on the country's political life.

Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7, Hezbollah has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces in actions opposed by the LF and other parties.

"We don't want to wake up one day, as we did now, and find ourselves involved in a never-ending war," Geagea said Friday.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai, spiritual leader of Lebanon's largest Christian sect, held back tears as he presided over Sleiman's funeral in Byblos.

Outside the St Georges church, LF supporters waved the party's white flag with its cedar tree -- the symbol of Lebanon -- circled in red.

Mourners told AFP they were unconvinced by the army's version that car thieves killed Sleiman.

"This story never convinced me. It is not coherent at all," said Jean Habshi, 50, who came to pay his respects.

"Enough with Hezbollah, enough with the illegal weapons," Roba Hajal, 24, told AFP outside the church.

"If they (Hezbollah) did not kill him, at the very least they allowed the Syrians in. We are all at risk of meeting Pascal's fate," she said.

Lebanon has a long history of political assassinations that have taken place with impunity.

Years of economic meltdown have further strained a weak judiciary that has been widely accused of succumbing to political interference.

Ziad Hawat, an LF lawmaker from Byblos, on Friday called for a "serious, transparent" probe into Sleiman's murder, adding that the party had concerns "based on past experiences".

"We do not want the killer to be known to all," he added, while "remaining unknown to the judiciary".

On Tuesday, Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi vowed to get tough on Syrians after several were arrested on suspicion of involvement in Sleiman's killing.

© 2024 AFP

Fairobserver.comwww.fairobserver.com/world-news/europe-news/the-lebanese-phalanges-in-the-interwar-era/

The Lebanese Phalanges in the Interwar Era - Fair Observer

Feb 13, 2024 ... The Phalanges, a Lebanese Christian paramilitary movement, took inspiration from Europe's fascist movements between World War I and World ...

Cia.govwww.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP06T00412R000200240001-2.pdf

LEBANON S PHALANGE PARTY - CIA

The Lebanese Phalange Organization (Munazzamat al-. Kataeb al-Lubnaniyya in Arabic) is largely the creation of one influential Lebanese family, the Jumayyils.

Wikipedia.orgen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalangist_Party

Phalangist Party - Wikipedia

Kataeb Party, a Christian right-wing political party in Lebanon. Disambiguation icon. This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title ...

Encyclopedia.comwww.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/phalangists

Phalangists | Encyclopedia.com

The Phalanges Party established the most powerful militia in Lebanon as early as the 1950s, and the party attracted followers in the 1960s and 1970s by ...

Aljazeera.comwww.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/16/sabra-and-shatila-massacre-40-years-on-explainer

Sabra and Shatila massacre: What happened in Lebanon in 1982?

Sep 16, 2022 ... Israeli-backed Phalange militia killed between 2,000 and 3,500 Palestinian refugees and Lebanese civilians in two days. ... It was one of the most ...

Enigma: The anatomy of Israel’s intelligence failure almost 45 years ago

THE YOM KIPPUR WAR OF 1973 AND THE GOLAN HEIGHTS WAR 1982

A TALE OF HUBRIS AND RACISM, SAVING VICTORY FROM THE JAWS OF DEFEAT 

THIS IS AN EXCERPT

LONG READ FEATURE ARTICLE FROM 2017
YOU MIGHT WANT TO 'PRINT' IT AND SAVE IT
AS A PDF TO READ LATER, IT IS 33 PAGES LONG

Bruce Riedel

Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, Center for Middle East Policy

Director - The Intelligence Project

The critical meeting on the 3rd took place at the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem. The Head of Research, Aryeh Shalev, represented the DMI position, as General Zeira was ill. The Mossad director was not invited. Shalev explained the Egyptian build-up as an exercise, reminded the prime minister that the DMI had been right in May, and again judged the risk of war as “low.” The Syrians were admittedly more threatening, but there had been an air clash over the Mediterranean on September 13 in which 13 Syrian Mig-21’s were shot down for only one IAF loss; the DMI presumed Syria’s build up was more related to fears of an Israeli attack after the clash than anything else. IAF imagery of the Golan presented a frightening picture, especially compared to the May war scare. Now 850 tanks were forward deployed (compared to only 250 six months before) and 31 SAM batteries were deployed (compared to 2 in May). But Shalev argued there was no cause for alarm, it was just Syrian posturing. As usual, Syria was not given as much attention as Egypt. At the end of the meeting, the prime minister shook Shalev’s hand and thanked him for calming her down. No full cabinet meeting was scheduled until after Yom Kippur on Sunday, the 7th of October.[29]

Meanwhile, in Damascus the Egyptian War Minister met secretly with his counterparts and then with President Assad. According to the account of Nasser’s journalist-confidant after the war, Muhammad Heikal, they finalized October 6 as D-Day and agreed that H-Hour would be 1400. This was a compromise between the two allies; Syria wanted an earlier attack and Egypt one closer to dusk. Egyptian war plans had always preferred an attack at 1800 so that night would cover much of the crossing of equipment to reinforce the bridgehead.[30] October 6 was also Assad’s 43rd birthday.[31]

The next day, October 4, a larger security meeting in the IDF was given the same appraisal. No mobilization of the IDF was ordered. Sadat and Assad, meanwhile, were informing the Soviet ambassadors in Cairo and Damascus that war was imminent, but did not provide the exact D-Day.[32] Assad was the more forthcoming and informative. On the 5th, Soviet transport aircraft—including giant AN-22s—began evacuating the dependents of Soviet diplomats and advisors from Egypt and Syria. Sadat would later bitterly complain that the Soviet evacuation betrayed a “total lack of confidence in us and our fighting ability.”[33]

The Russian evacuation should have been the final straw that convinced the DMI that war was imminent. There was no reason to evacuate from Egypt if Tahrir was really only an exercise. The Israelis even intercepted a phone call involving the Iraqi ambassador in Moscow, who was close to the Soviet leadership, in which he reported that the Soviets were evacuating because they expected an imminent Egyptian-Syrian attack on Israel.[34] The evacuation did raise some concerns in the IDF’s headquarters in Tel Aviv but the Soviet move did not prompt a change in the DMI estimate. The rest of the 7th Armored Brigade was sent to the Golan, but a long, 43-paragraph appraisal by the DMI concluded it was really all an exercise and there was “low probability” for war. Later in the day General Zeira told Dayan “I don’t think we are going to war.”[35]

That morning, October 5, at 0230 in Tel Aviv, the Source called the Mossad station in London. Again, he used the code word for war. Alerted immediately, Mossad chief Zvi Zamir took a morning first flight to London. Zamir was later severely criticized by the post-war investigation for not immediately flying to London and for going back to sleep for a couple of hours.[36] Ashraf Marwan was in Paris when he alerted the Mossad station in London. He didn’t know exactly when the war was to start, but he made an educated guess. A friend had told him that Egyptair, the national airline, was moving all of its aircraft from Cairo to Libya on October 5. Marwan knew from the war plans that an attack would follow this within 24 hours. According to the war plan H-Hour would be at 6pm. He told Zamir this late on the evening of the 5th. The Mossad chief called home at 0340 in Israel, where it was now October 6—Yom Kippur—and alerted his staff. War was expected to start at 6pm that day. It was not five days advance warning.[37] 

Egyptian Armed Forces crossing the eastern bank of the Suez Canal during October war.

Dayan was briefed on the new Mossad information just before 6am. He told the IDF command not to order a general mobilization on the basis of the Source’s news but to call up some reservists and evacuate children from the Golan Heights settlements. At a cabinet meeting at 9am, the prime minister ordered a larger call-up and ruled out a preemptive air strike. She met with the American ambassador after the cabinet meeting and told him war was imminent, and asked that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger tell the Russians immediately to call off the Arabs. Kissinger was awakened in his room at the Waldorf Astoria to the news war was imminent. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger was informed minutes later. Schlesinger recalled later the outbreak of war came “almost wholly as a surprise. We really had all the clues we needed but all these indicators were dismissed as Arab hyperbole. The Israeli mind set was that the Arabs would not attack until they had air superiority. The U.S. mind set was the Israelis know best.”[38]

Egyptian vehicles crossing the Suez Canal on October 7, 1973,

 during the Yom Kippur War.

EXPLAINING THE MEHDAL

The war cost Israel 2,656 dead and 7,250 wounded. 300 of the 500 Israeli tanks on the Canal and Golan were destroyed in the first days of the war. The intelligence mistake was enormous and cost Zeira his job. The Agranat Commission that investigated the blunder concluded that a “doctrinaire adherence to the konzeptziya” was at the root of the problem. The generals who were involved in the disaster would spend the rest of their lives arguing over whose fault it was. Zeira came to blame the Mossad for running what he concluded was a double agent that gave Israel the wrong concept. Zamir sued Zeira for slander and for leaking the name of an intelligence asset.

Any professional intelligence officer will naturally be inclined to sympathize with the Israeli intelligence community in 1973. I have worked with the Israelis and know many of the individuals in this story. Making sense of incomplete data is hard; making clear estimates under enormous time pressure about life and death situations is very hard. Everything always looks clear after the fact, anyone can connect the dots after the game is over. The Israelis were determined not to be worst-case alarmists and cry wolf every time the skies darkened. But even with all the sympathy of one professional for another, the Israeli intelligence failure in 1973 is remarkable. They knew so much and yet came to the worst estimate.

The problem was indeed rooted in the concept and the intelligence community’s slavish commitment to its interpretation of all data collected about the enemy and his intentions. As Zamir put it: “[W]e simply did not feel them capable of war.”[39] Even with amazing intelligence collection successes and the warning from Hussein, the intelligence community refused to be budged from its line of analysis. It had been proven right in the past and was supremely confident it was right again. Even when some more junior officers questioned the logic, like the Jordan desk officer, they were ignored. As a future head of analysis in the DMI Ephraim Kam has argued, our “error began with a basic concept that the Arabs would not attack during the next two to three years, and every new development was adopted to this concept.”[40]

But it was more than the concept that was in error. The Israeli intelligence community and the Israeli policy community had created a small and intimate feedback loop in which their common assumptions about the enemy were never challenged. Dayan, a military hero of epic proportions, shared the fundamental assumption that the Arabs were incompetent with his intelligence advisers. Since the prime minister relied on her generals entirely on military issues, she shared it as well. Again, to quote Kam: “[I]n estimating the enemy’s behavior the intelligence community is not alone, it got plenty of feedback from outside. Once a national consensus about the opponent’s behavior becomes settled, it is very hard to dislodge.”[41]

The meetings held in the weeks from Hussein’s warning of war to the attack itself illustrate the problem. The intelligence community adhered to its concept and interpreted the data collected to fit inside the box. The policy consumer of the intelligence estimate did not challenge the analysis, but rather reinforced it. “The result is feedback: the decisionmakers contribute to the creation of a climate of opinion that influences the intelligence process, while intelligence provides information that supports the decisionmakers’ assessment. Decisionmakers influence the analytical process as well. Analysts may over-emphasize information that supports existing policy.”[42]

As a small country, the Israeli national security bureaucracy is relatively small and lean. This was certainly true in 1973. The feedback loop was a fairly small one, and it would have been very difficult for someone in the establishment to challenge the consensus successfully. With the national command authority absent for much of the critical phase of the crisis, the problem was exacerbated.

The Americans proved to be no help either. They too were mesmerized by the concept. Richard Helms had served as director of Central Intelligence since before the 1967 war to just before the 1973 war. In 1967 he had rightly predicted Israel’s stunning victory. He told President Richard Nixon in 1973 that the IDF “will be able to beat each and every one of its enemies and all together for the next five years. Damn it, the Israelis are really so much better off with what they have than their pitiful and stupid neighbors, who cannot do a thing without the Russians.”[43] Rather than a second set of eyes on the problem and a check on Israeli assumptions, the American intelligence community became an amen chorus for Israeli errors.

President Richard Nixon, Vice President Gerald Ford, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig in Oval Office. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Dayan was probably the most surprised of all and he almost immediately went into a deep depression from the shock of the disaster. By late on October 7 he was “close to a mental breakdown” and was speaking of the fall of the Third Temple. He ordered the commander of the IAF to put all of its resources into fighting Syria and said: “[T]he Third Temple is in danger. If the air force does not transfer all its power to block the Syrians, Syrian tanks will enter Israel soon.”[44] He ordered an alert of the Israeli nuclear deterrent. Israel’s medium-range Jericho missiles, developed with French assistance in the 1960s, were ordered on alert and deployed where American satellites could see them at their base at Beit Zecharia near Jerusalem. Normally the Jericho’s were hidden from American intelligence eyes. William Quandt, who served in the White House, recalled later: “[W]e did not know what kind of warheads the Jericho’s had but it did not make much sense to me that they would be equipped with conventional ordinance.” The tide of war soon shifted to Israel’s advantage, thankfully and Dayan ordered the missiles back into their concrete dugouts.[45] By the end of the war, Dayan was increasingly ignored by the prime minister—she did not fire him, but she had lost confidence in him.

The Agranat Commission recommended some organizational changes to prevent another disaster. This is always the default position of bureaucracies when intelligence fails: Change the organizational flow chart, not the menu itself. In particular, the commission recommended that the Mossad establish an analytical capability itself to challenge the military intelligence assessments, and that the Foreign Ministry significantly build up its research and analysis wing to add a third voice to the debate. The theory was that having three organizations each independently study the data and make estimates would diminish the chance of the concept going unchallenged.

LEBANON 1982, FAILURE REDUX

It did not work out that way. Less than a decade later, Israel suffered another major intelligence debacle when it invaded Lebanon. Once again, a consensus was formed between the intelligence and policy communities that a short war in Lebanon against the Palestinian resistance movement led by Yasser Arafat could change the strategic balance in the region in Israel’s favor. The hero of the 1973 war and now Defense Minister Ariel Sharon was the chief proponent of the new concept, but many others supported him. Sharon had been one of the most firm believers in the 1973 concept, believing Egypt would face “total destruction” and “a horrible, horrible cost” if it went to war then.[46] Now, he was the architect of a new concept, remaking the Middle East via a war in Lebanon. Using a provocation—an Iraqi terror attack in London on the Israeli ambassador—Israel invaded Lebanon in June 1982.[47] 

 

Israeli troops in south Lebanon (1982). Source: Wikimedia Commons.

A critical ingredient in the new concept was the assumption that the majority of the population in Lebanon would welcome Israel as it defeated the Palestinians and their Syrian allies. The Maronite Christian minority in Lebanon would actively assist the Israelis against the Palestinians and the Syrians. The Sunni Muslim community was allegedly tired of Palestinian and Syrian hegemony and would be neutral. The largest demographic group in the country, the Shiite Muslims, was ignored. They were not politically active and not on the new Israeli concept’s list of key actors. This was a grave error. Why did it occur? Why was Israeli intelligence, just nine years after the Yom Kippur war, again to fail to understand the dynamics of another war?

In Lebanon in 1982, the Israeli intelligence community relied heavily on its Christian ally, the Lebanese Forces, for intelligence about the complexities of Lebanese politics. For decades, Israel’s concern in Lebanon had been the Palestinian terrorist organizations and the Syrian occupation army, while Lebanese politics and society were not a priority. For understanding this arena, the Israelis turned to the Lebanese Forces.

Bashir Jumayyil was the leader of the Lebanese Forces in the early 1980s. The son of the founder of the oldest Christian party, the Phalange, Bashir was an activist who despised the Palestinians, Syrians, and virtually all Muslims. He conspired with Sharon to get himself elected president of Lebanon after the Israeli invasion in June 1982 and promised Israel he would sign a peace treaty, drive out the Palestinians, and Syrians and create a reliable northern ally for Israel.

Responsibility for dealing with the Phalangists, as they were popularly known in Israel, rested with the Mossad as a covert operation. The links between the Mossad and the Christians went back many years, but had only really blossomed after the Lebanese civil war began in 1975. Mossad officers frequently visited the Phalange headquarters in East Beirut, and Phalangists were frequent visitors to Israel. Arms and training flowed into the Lebanese Forces militia from Israel.

Since the Mossad dealt directly with the Phalangists, it became the expert on both the Christians in particular and Lebanon in general. But the Mossad found it difficult to maintain its analytic objectivity while also being the operational interlocutor with the Christians. It became their advocate as well as handler. As the Kahan Commission reported, after the war had culminated in a Phalangist massacre of innocent Palestinian women and children in September 1982:

“the Mossad was the organization that actually handled the relations between the Phalangists and Israel, and its representatives maintained close contacts with the Phalangist leadership. The Mossad, to a not inconsiderable extent under the influence of constant and close relations with the Phalangist elite, felt positively about strengthening relations with that organization.”[48]

The then-head of the Mossad, Nahum Admoni, put it succinctly: “[T]he Mossad tried to the best of its ability to present and approach the subject (of intelligence on Lebanon) as objectively as possible; but since it was in charge of the contacts, I accept as an assumption that subjective and not only objective relations also emerged.”[49] The key intelligence collector and analyst on Lebanon, the Mossad, became too often the advocate of Phalangist assessments. Since Sharon wanted to hear that his concept for change in Lebanon would work, the policy and intelligence feedback loop became again a self-fulfilling, closed world.

Military intelligence of course also collected and analyzed intelligence on Lebanon as well, but its leadership was reluctant to challenge the Mossad’s primacy. When Jumayyil was assassinated on September 14, 1982, the IDF entered into Muslim West Beirut. Phalangist fighters were then sent into two Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Shatilla, where they proceeded to massacre the inhabitants. The Kahan Commission, which investigated the incident, concluded that the director of military intelligence at the time, Major General Yehoshua Saguy, “stepped aside” from his responsibility to assess the likelihood of a Phalangist massacre because he did not want to clash with Sharon and the Mossad on the Christians propensity for extreme violence. Consequently, the commission recommended he be removed from his command. Ironically, because Admoni had only taken command of the Mossad two days before the assassination, the Kahan Commission absolved him of responsibility and he remained Director until 1989.[50] It did fault the Mossad as an institution for adhering to the “conception” and for the “view prevalent in the Mossad that the Phalangists were a trustworthy element” despite their long track record of extremist violence against Palestinian civilians.

READ ON 

Face to Face with Hezbollah

The Many Faces of the Lebanese Shiite Organization

by Dan Lieberman / December 7th, 2023

As part of a fact-finding mission to the Middle East in late 2007, one year after Hezbollah concluded a war with Israel, we spent a few days with Hezbollah. I knew that Hezbollah carried heavy baggage, could be threatening, and operated as a state within a state, but it never seemed, as bludgeoning reports insisted, an international terrorist organization. All of the few horrific actions involving Hezbollah have been tit-for-tat revenge attacks for Israeli murder of its cadres, such as the February 16, 1992, Israeli Apache AH64 helicopter missile attack on an automobile that killed Sheikh Abbas Musawi, the then secretary-general of Hezbollah, his wife, and five-year-old son.

Face-to-face in November 2007 revealed an organized and thoughtful Hezbollah without traces of being fanatical.

---

They speak English, carry I-pods, and listen to Santana and Guns and Roses. They don’t approach with anger and don’t behave overbearing. They are well-educated, mostly from Beirut’s American University, relaxed and alert to world happenings. They impress as being more secular than pious. They are spokespersons for Hezbollah – the Party of God.

Maybe they are a selected group of well-trained talkers for foreigners; a subtle means to convince the unwary that Hezbollah’s followers are just everyday guys and gals. Maybe, but observations and events were inconsistent with the media’s drastic descriptions of the militant Lebanese Shiite movement.

The Party of God has insufficient support for exercising political control of Lebanon and knows it doesn’t have the numbers or the strength to turn the Levant into an Islamic Republic. Hezbollah’s clerics don’t indicate they intend to force Shari’a upon their constituencies. More an amalgam of differing viewpoints – religious, social, political, and militant – Hezbollah is solidified by a common struggle for the dispossessed and a battle against corruption. Meetings with Hezbollah and Lebanese officials together with a trip to southern Lebanon, as a member of a Council for National Interest peace delegation, revealed much about the nature of the Party of God.

The voyage started in Beirut, at a tenement building that is indistinguishable from the adjoining buildings in the Shiite district. Hezbollah followers crowd the sidewalk to greet and lead to a simple apartment on an upper floor. Sayyid Nawaf Al-Musawi, the head of Hezbollah’s International Relations, is dressed in conventional clothes.

The only indication of religious fervor is the beads he rotates in his right hand. He sits relaxed but talks seriously and with conviction. The female translator’s minor errors and dubious translations of colloquial expressions are politely excused. The head of Hezbollah’s International Relations has a lot to say – about everything.

Region

In Iraq there is a severe humane problem – same as in Palestine. The West Bank is now a prison. The US gives no importance to the Iraqi people. US policy is based on Israeli safety and Middle East oil. America is creating chaos and the region is under its hegemony. The regime is increasing the problems rather than resolving them. Now they are talking about a new war in Iran. Iraq was weak, but Iran is strong and it will be a much harder war. A barrel of oil and a barrel of gunfire will create a catastrophe that is beyond comprehension. A disaster is happening and Americans are giving a story that is false. They were lying about WMDs in Iraq and now they are lying about nuclear issues in Iran. They told the people that the Iraqis would welcome them as liberators. This is an example of a delusion to the citizens of the US. American citizens deserve to know the truth. Colin Powell gave false information to the UN but he thought it was the truth. When someone tries to find the truth he is called a terrorist. America operates on misleading evidence.

Governing Lebanon

The one who rules must be accepted by all the others. Now the minority is ruling, but this is supported by the U.S. Why does the U.S. want this? For the benefit of the Israelis. We are a movement only against Israeli attack and Israeli occupation. We support unity. We encourage consensus. The Vatican, the Arabs want unity in Lebanon, but the American influences in Lebanon do not want this. We want a multi-ethnic nation and not as in Israel, which calls itself a Jewish country even though ¼ of its citizens are Christians and Muslims. We cannot have an election with 50% plus one because the text of the constitution is clear – there has to be a 2/3 majority. A person elected by 50% plus one is not the President and only an impostor.

Israel

Hezbollah will never recognize Israel. Israel (Palestine?) should be a democratic nation where all religions exist together and have equal freedom. In the 1919 Paris meeting, the Zionists presented a document which coveted South Lebanon and delineated four river basins they wanted to own.

Sayyid Nawaf Al-Musawi ended his conversation with prophetic expressions.

We don’t judge you on the basis of your stand on Israel. Do not judge us on that issue. There are natural ties between Shia Lebanon and Iran. They have the same source. The fifteenth century Iranian studies came from Lebanon. The geography of Lebanon enabled the Shia to stay. It is tough to conquer Southern Lebanon because of its geography.

Leaving Beirut for the South of Lebanon is similar to leaving any metropolis – traffic jams, new expressways, and roadways that cut through residential areas. The Paris of the Middle East has lost much of its charm. It is heavy until the view of the blue-green Mediterranean waters calm the atmosphere. Banana groves, similar to those that camouflaged the Hezbollah rocket carriers during the 2006 summer war, are prominent. Also prominent are posters of Rafiq Hariri, the assassinated and previous Prime Minister. After the Sunni city of Sidon, the peaceful countryside of groves and orchards is marked with newly repaired bridges that cross ready-to-be-paved roads. The war-damaged roads lead to Tyre.

The Shiite city has freshly sanded beaches and a picturesque seaside promenade. The posters have changed – they now feature Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s political leader, Tyre is the home of Sheik Nabil Kaook, Hezbollah commander of South Lebanon, who narrowly escaped death when Israeli warplanes bombed his home in the 2006 war.

In his presence, women are not greeted with handshakes, but with hands respectfully placed over the heart. The women sit veiled and separate from the men. The cleric is well-groomed and well-tailored – his white turban shows his status and his brown cloak matches the brown chair on which he sits.

Harsh and accusatory, interspersed with feelings for the dispossessed, the Hezbollah Sheik has one succinct message: “The United States took the decision to go to war and to continue the war. It treats Lebanon as just another occupation.”

Tyre is also identified with the Al-Sadr Foundation, which manages an orphanage under the control of Rabab al-Sadr, sister of disappeared Shiite cleric Sayyid Musa al-Sadr. Shi’a clerics who have the title of Sayyid claim descent from Muhammad. Sayyid Musa al-Sadr is more famous than his designation. His life, a story of dedication, success, and an eventual mystery reveal strong links between Shiites from Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon.

Born in Qom, Iran in 1928 to a Lebanese family of theologians, Musa al-Sadr studied theology in Najaf, Iraq. Being related to the father of Iraq’s Muqtada al-Sadr, Iraq was another home for him. In 1960 Musa al-Sadr moved to Tyre, his father’s birthplace. He soon became recognized as a strong advocate for the economically and politically disadvantaged Shi’ite population. His role in establishing schools and medical clinics throughout southern Lebanon led to the 1974 founding of the Movement of the Disinherited, whose armed wing became Amal, the other Shiite party in Lebanon.

While successfully improving economic and social conditions for a disenfranchised Shiite population, Sayyid Musa al-Sadr made enemies of landlords, corrupt officials, political establishment, and members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. His eventual disassociation with, what was then, a corrupt Amal, created other groups, some of whom later coalesced into Hezbollah. On February 16, 1985, an “Open Letter to the Downtrodden in Lebanon and the World,” alerted the world to Hezbollah’s formal existence. Musa al-Sadr was not present. In 1978, when attending a conference in Libya, Musa al-Sadr mysteriously vanished. No clue to his disappearance has surfaced.

Elegant chalets grace the barren hills of southern Lebanon. Many of them are homes of expatriate Lebanese, who have always been principal contributors to Lebanon’s economy. Expatriates from Sierra Leone, the Gulf States, Dearborn, Michigan, and other U.S. cities send funds to their Lebanese relatives who purchase properties throughout Lebanon. Southern Lebanon has many retired Dearborns who have returned to their families and to a land they always cherished. But that’s not all, informed persons claim Southern Lebanon has diamond and drug smuggling that help finance Hezbollah and local communities.

The elegant chalets emphasize the destruction of villages during the 2006 summer war. Bint Jbiel, “the daughter of the mountain,” rested in the path of the invading Israeli army. Israel’s military dropped leaflets that ordered the population to leave the village. The inhabitants obeyed the order and now the old city, not the new part, is 70% destroyed; a mound of rubble that includes the 600-year-old mosque.

Homes along a nearby dirt road are pocked with shell and bullet holes, evidence of tanks having discharged random fire at empty houses for no apparent reason except they were close to the path of the tank. A total of eighteen Israeli tanks broke down, crashed, or were destroyed by Hezbollah ambushes during the Israeli invasion.

From a hill close to the mined border with Israel, the deputy mayor of Marjayoun pointed to the verdant fields of Northern Israel. He claimed that in 1948 Israel seized one kilometer of Lebanese territory and that the houses in the distance are mainly empty.

Damage-weary Lebanon is not confined to the border area. Timur Goksel, former senior advisor to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), who has been in Lebanon for twenty years, noted he had never witnessed so much wanton destruction. He said that Iran funds an Iranian Hezbollah that has no connections with Lebanese Hezbollah. Five hundred million dollars of these funds are being used to repair war-damaged southern Lebanon. In contrast, the U.S. is contributing 34 million dollars to repair a large bridge.

Timor Goksel refutes the March 14 majority party charge that Hezbollah is obstructionist: “The Shiites (not all Hezbollah) are 30% of the country and cannot rule on their own. They want to have a role in the government and they want to be a mainstream party.” Principal leaders in the Lebanese government support Goksel’s evaluation. Former general Michel Aoun, Christian head of the Change and Reform parliamentary bloc, wants what Hezbollah wants; a new parliament where the new majority will be accepted. Aoun’s bloc has a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Hezbollah. He insisted the MOU is not an alliance but a strategy for integrating Hezbollah into a mutual defense of Lebanon. Former General and then Maronite President of Lebanon, Emil Lahoud, agreed with Hezbollah’s determination to follow constitutional law and only elect a president with a 2/3 quorum.

The Lebanese president describes Hezbollah as “one hundred percent Lebanese. Hezbollah takes material assistance from Iran and would take it from the devil if necessary to protect their country. They are not terrorists.” Fawsi Salloukh, Lebanon’s Minister of Foreign Affairs talked from a prepared

document that severely criticized Israel and the United States. He also wants a new election and not a litigious issue. He doesn’t believe Iran wants to dominate Hezbollah and stressed its natural for Shiites in Lebanon and Iran to establish good relations.

Forgotten amidst the rhetoric, but mentioned by Michel Aoun and Emil Lahoud are simple facts: Hezbollah has had electoral alliances with Saad Hariri’s Future Movement, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, and Noah Berri’s Amal. In 1999, Hezbollah members of Lebanon’s engineering syndicate formed a coalition with the Phalange Party, a rightist Christian group, and the National Liberal Party, both allies of Israel during the civil war.

The Halifee restaurant in the Dahieh neighborhood is considered a popular dining place for Hezbollah followers; only two blocks from the Haret Hreil Hussineyeh mosque, whose senior cleric is Hezbollah religious leader Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. Israeli bombers, during the July 2006 war, leveled the cleric’s home, as well as part of the surrounding area. The restaurant crowds with people enjoying the food, enjoying the elegant surroundings, enjoying the evening. There is no indication of a particular type of person; no sign of a distinctive Hezbollah character.

La Terrase is a restaurant located on Hadi Nasrallah, a street, named after leader Hasan Nassrallah’s deceased son. Huge craters from Israeli bombing remain in the adjacent neighborhood. Enter la Terrase and first have a choice of a coffee bar. Go deeper and there is a cafeteria. Further in is a small restaurant. Climb the stairs and enter a huge restaurant surrounded by couches on which linger multitudes of young couples; drinking coffee, engaged in conversations and quiet embraces – not the ordinary media images of Hezbollah life.

Innocent Americans were killed on September 11, 2001, by Al-Qaeda terrorists who considered the World Trade Center to be imperialist land – the center of the U.S. establishment. Innocent Lebanese were killed on July 15, 2006, one day of many bombardments that contributed to the vast destruction of the Dahieh district by Israeli military who considered Dahieh to be Hezbollah land – the center of the Hezbollah establishment.

The U.S. and Hezbollah establishments still exist. Many innocents died in both places. The U.S. remembers the day 9/11 as a bitter memory. Lebanon had a mid-summer nightmare of smaller 9/11’s; angry memories the residents of Dahieh will forever retain. The Western world rightfully memorializes America’s tragedy but neglects Lebanon’s equal tragedies.

It is that neglect which created Hezbollah, sustained Hezbollah, and made Hezbollah popular throughout the Arab world. Years of punishing emergencies in Lebanon — refugees from the Syrian civil war, Hezbollah’s attachment to the Syrian strife, the 4 August 2020 explosion of ammonium nitrate stored at the Port of Beirut that caused at least 218 deaths, 7,000 injuries, $15 billion in property damage, and left an estimated 300,000 people homeless, followed by economic collapse have polarized the Lebanese and may have affected contemporary Hezbollah’s operations and its acceptance by the Lebanese population.

Dan Lieberman publishes commentaries on foreign policy, economics, and politics at substack.com. He is author of the non-fiction books A Third Party Can Succeed in America, Not until They Were Gone, Think Tanks of DC, The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name, David L. McWellan). Read other articles by Dan.

Hezbollah demystified

Despite relentless Israeli attempts to misrepresent and dismantle Hezbollah, the organization has endured. A look at the group's history and goals explains its enduring power and shows how much of what’s said in Western media is not true.

By Qassam Muaddi 

 November 15, 2024 

MONDOWEISS
A Palestinian man waves Hezbollah’ flag during a rally in Gaza city on January 28, 2015, after two Israeli soldiers and a Spanish peacekeeper were killed in an exchange of fire between Hezbollah and Israel. The soldiers were killed when Hezbollah fired a missile at a convoy of Israeli military vehicles on the frontier with Lebanon. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/APA Images)


Hezbollah, Arabic for “The Party of God”, also named “The Islamic Resistance of Lebanon,” has been increasingly making headlines in recent months, as Israel continues its war on Lebanon. Earlier this week, Israel’s new war minister Yizrael Katz announced the “defeat” of Hezbollah. The group responded with unprecedented rocket barrages and more drone attacks on Haifa and Tel Aviv, showcasing its fighting capacity.

In early October, Israel started its offensive on Lebanon with the pager explosion attacks that killed dozens of Lebanese, mostly civilians. The attacks were followed by a series of assassinations of Hezbollah’s top military leaders, culminating with the assassination of Hezbollah’s secretary general Hasan Nasrallah, and then of the strongest candidate to succeed him, Hezbollah’s executive council chief, Hashem Safiyyudin. Israel then began a massive bombing campaign on the south of Lebanon, which expanded to the Beqaa Valley and Mount Lebanon, allegedly targeting Hezbollah’s rocket arsenals.

But Hezbollah didn’t collapse. On the contrary, it has been increasing its military action on a daily basis, introducing farther-reaching and heavier rockets to the fight, and offering a stiff resistance to Israeli incursion attempts in the south.

As during the ten-year-long Syrian war, in which Hezbollah played a major role, and as in 2006, when Hezbollah fought off another Israeli offensive on Lebanon, the group has become the object of speculations, curiosity and contradictory narratives about it. So, who is Hezbollah? What does it want? How does it work? And how much of what is said about it in the West and the media is true?
Lebanese, Shia, or pro-Palestinian?

In a way, Hezbollah is the product of the crossing of political, sectarian, class, and regional conflicts in Lebanon in the 1980s. The group was born as a response to Israel’s invasion and occupation of Lebanon in 1982, but its roots go back to the Shia movement that started as a social protest movement. Most of the founders of Hezbollah had made their first steps as activists in the ranks of the ‘Movement of the deprived’, started by the Iranian-Lebanese cleric and social leader Mousa Sadr in the mid 1970s, when the Shia were among the most marginalized and impoverished communities in Lebanon.

As Israel repeatedly attacked Lebanon to counter Palestinian resistance fighters based in the south of the country, Mousa Sadr was among the first to call for organized Lebanese resistance, and founded the ‘Legions of Lebanese Resistance’, which acronym in Arabic reads ‘Amal’, that also means ‘Hope’. The group soon became the Shia militia engaged in the civil war, especially after Sadr’s disappearance in 1978.

After Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and occupation of Beirut in 1982, the Lebanese communist party launched the ‘Lebanese National Resistance Front’ that was joined by other leftist and nationalist parties, and became the main resistance force to Israel. It is then that several Islamic activists from Amal, other Shia groups, charities, mosques, and neighborhood associations met in Al-Muntazar Islamic religious school in the city of Baalbek, and decided that they needed an Islamic force dedicated only to resist Israeli occupation. They named it ‘Hezbollah’, in reference to verse 56 of the surat 5 of the Quran, which says that “The partisans of [or those loyal to] God will be victorious.”

The founding group had two things in common: the priority of resistance to Israel, putting aside all other political differences, and their agreement on who their religious reference should be. The ‘religious reference’ is a centuries-old Shia tradition, where every community chooses a religious scholar that meets certain qualifications, and they accept their religious judgment in major issues in which the community can’t reach agreement. The founding members of Hezbollah who met in Baalbek agreed that they accepted, as religious reference, the Iranian cleric and leader, Ayatollah Khomeini.
“Iranian proxy”?

Hezbollah’s relationship to Iran has always been a contentious topic, as the group has been accused of being Iran’s proxy in Lebanon and in the region. However, the relationship between Hezbollah’s roots and Iran is older than the establishment of the current Iranian regime and more complex than it is often presented. In fact, it was Lebanese religious scholars, mystics, and preachers from Mount Amel, known today as the south of Lebanon, who introduced Shiism to Iran in the 17th century. The bond between Shiites in both countries continued, exchanging religious leaders, scholars and students, and forming family links. But in 1982, that relationship took on a new level.

As Israeli forces besieged Beirut, the recently-established Islamic republic of Iran sent members of its revolutionary guard to nearby Syria and offered the Syrian government to help fight the Israeli invasion. That Iranian force later changed its mission, after it became clear that Israel was not planning to invade Syria, and began to offer training to any Lebanese who wanted to resist the occupation. The newborn organization, Hezbollah, became the main recruiter of volunteers, and the main organizer of the newly trained fighters, and thus was able to grow its militant body in a short time. That relationship between the Lebanese group and the Iranian revolutionary guard grew, and continued to this day.

However, Hezbollah’s late leader Hasan Nasrallah explained multiple times in media interviews the distinction between the group’s relationship to the Iranian state and to its supreme leader. According to Nasrallah, Hezbollah considers Iran as a country a ”friend and ally”, while it considers the supreme leader, Khomeini and his successor Khamenei, its “religious reference” to whom it goes back only in matters that require a religious ruling to decide. This distinction remains blurry to many, as the supreme leader is also the head of the state in Iran, and because on the ideological level, he is also the “religious reference” of the Iranian state. However, other Lebanese parties have more unbalanced, dependent, and explicit relations to foreign countries. One example is the relation between Saudi Arabia and the ‘Future’ party of the assassinated Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, which competes to represent the Sunni community. Another is the far-right anti-Palestinian Lebanese Phalanges party, who monopolized the representation of Maronite Christians during the civil war, and its relations with the US, France, and even Israel itself during the 1982 invasion. A complex context which makes Hezbollah’s relationship to Iran far from strange in the Lebanese political culture.
Hezbollah in politics

In its forty-two years of existence so far, Hezbollah has evolved as a major political force in Lebanon. It remained only a resistance movement until 1995, when it ran for parliamentary elections for the first time. At the time, the Lebanese civil war had just ended, and the new generation of Lebanese youth were looking for something new to believe in and to be united around, and the battle for the occupied south provided them that, increasing Hezbollah’s popularity. The group had also begun to develop social programs to assist the families of its fallen fighters, like health care institutions and schools, which also provided help for poor Lebanese.

This popularity increased even more after Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in the year 2000, which marked the first unconditional liberation of an occupied Arab territory. Hezbollah continued to score successes in elections, maintaining a growing presence in the Lebanese parliament and in many municipalities, especially in Shia areas like the south and the Beqaa, forging alliances with other Lebanese parties.

In 2008, Hezbollah struck an alliance agreement with the emergent new Christian force, the ‘Free Patriotic Movement’, led by the veteran former army general Michael Aoun, who ironically had built his heroic image in the 1980s for standing up against Syrian military presence in Lebanon. The unusual Shia-Christian alliance gave Hezbollah unprecedented leverage in Lebanese politics when Aoun became president of Lebanon in 2016. The president in Lebanon’s constitution must be a Maronite Christian, and Hezbollah suddenly had a powerful ally who made it to the presidential Baabda palace, with Hezbollah’s support. This, among other things, like the military capacity of Hezbollah to start or prevent war with Israel, earned it the accusation of controlling the Lebanese state.

However, Hezbollah has never been the only party with such an influence in Lebanese politics, and the overall position of the Lebanese state is unmovable on several issues, against the position of Hezbollah. For instance, Lebanon never accepted Hezbollah’s proposals to seek Iranian assistance to modernize and strengthen the Lebanese army, or to buy fuel from Iran to solve the fuel crisis in the country in 2021. Most importantly, Hezbollah only accessed state offices that can be reached through elections, in the parliament or municipalities, but it was never given any key administrative position in the government agencies, or in the judicial system. This is due, according to Hezbollah and its allies, to external pressure on Lebanon, mostly from western countries, who consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

More than a militant group

A designation of “terrorism” that has put Hezbollah in the crosshairs of successive US administrations, who have systematically given unconditional support to every Israeli war aimed at destroying Hezbollah, even if it caused destruction to the rest of Lebanon. In the latest ongoing attempt, Israel has tried its best by targeting the head of Hezbollah’s pyramid, Nasrallah, and several key leaders surrounding him. However, the Lebanese party’s capacity to sustain the blows and continue the fight, without wavering, has demonstrated that contrary to popular belief about Arab and Middle Eastern organizations, Hezbollah is not an ideological cult led by one or a few charismatic men. In fact, Nasrallah himself said multiple times that Hezbollah did not have a leader, but a “leadership system”, run by institutions, with a continuous process of forming new leaders, ready to step in whenever there is a vacancy.

But the most important aspect of Hezbollah, and the most overlooked too, is that it is far more than a militant group with a cause and guns. Hezbollah represents the tradition and the decades-long struggle of a key component of Lebanese society. It is also the strongest representative, today, of the political choice of resistance to the US and Israel in Lebanon, which is much older and much more diverse than Hezbollah itself. It is also a social force with a strong presence in all fields of Lebanese public life, from politics, to education, to charity, to art and culture. And in times of war, it represents the feelings of large parts of the Lebanese society, that extend beyond the limits of religious communities or political sectarianism.

Israel and the U.S. are interfering in Lebanese politics to oust Hezbollah — here’s why it won’t work

Israel and the U.S. are trying to install an anti-Hezbollah leader as president of Lebanon, hoping to eliminate the military presence of the resistance in southern Lebanon. But it's not the first time Israel has interfered in Lebanese politics.

By Qassam Muaddi 

 November 12, 2024 
MONDOWEISS
Hezbollah supporters attend a mass rally and a televised speech by Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, to mark the third anniversary of the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, January 3, 2023. (Photo: Marwan Naamani/dpa via ZUMA Press/APA Images)


In his first speech as Secretary General, the new leader of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, said that the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon had been meeting leaders of Lebanese political parties opposed to Hezbollah. According to Qassem, the ambassador was trying to convince them that Hezbollah’s collapse in the face of Israel’s offensive was imminent, urging the Lebanese parties to oppose Hezbollah.

“You will never see our defeat,” Qassem said, addressing the ambassador, Lisa A. Johnson, directly and ignoring the Lebanese parties in question.

Two weeks earlier, a group of anti-Hezbollah parties gathered in the town of Maarab in Mount Lebanon, the headquarters of the Lebanese Forces — a far-right Christian party headed by its chairman, Samir Geagea. The parties in attendance issued a joint statement that indirectly blamed Iran for pushing Lebanon into a war it had no stake in, hijacking the decision of peace and war in Lebanon, and recruiting Lebanese citizens and using them as soldiers and “human shields.” The latter phrase was a veiled reference to Hezbollah, its social support base, and the people of southern Lebanon in general. The parties in Maarab also called for the election of a new president to the country.

Heading the meeting was Samir Geagea, a Maronite Christian known for his brutal suppression of Palestinian and Lebanese adversaries, including Christian rivals, during the Lebanese Civil War that took place between 1975 and 1989. He is also known for his collaboration with Israeli occupation forces in Lebanon after 1982 and for having spent 12 years in a Syrian prison on charges of collaboration with Israel.

Geagea has also been openly voicing his will to run for president of Lebanon, which under the Lebanese constitution must be held by a Christian Maronite. The president’s chair has been vacant for two years now, as the opposing political forces have failed to agree on a candidate. The president in Lebanon is elected by the parliament and thus needs a degree of consensus between represented parties, which has been absent since the latest president, Michel Aoun, finished his term in October 2022.

Aoun was an ally of Hezbollah and represented an important trend of Christian support for the resistance group in Lebanese politics since 2008. During his presidency, Hezbollah’s adversaries in Lebanon, like Geagea, continued to accuse the resistance group of taking over the state, especially during the height of the Syrian Civil War, in which Hezbollah was actively involved in defending the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Asad. After Aoun’s presidency, several political parties were unwilling to accept a president who would be close to Hezbollah and its allies. This presidential vacancy has extended to the current day.

Why the Lebanese presidency is important for Israel

When Israel began its offensive on Lebanon with the exploding pager and electronics attacks in mid-September, some Lebanese politicians seemed to have sensed that the influential role of Hezbollah in Lebanese politics was approaching its end. Calls to elect a new president increased, as the U.S. envoy, Amos Hochstein, brought his plan for a ceasefire.

Hochstein’s proposal included the retreat of Hezbollah’s fighting units north of the Litani River, essentially clearing Hezbollah’s stronghold in the south, and deploying more Lebanese army forces along the provisional border between Israel and Lebanon.

Hochstein’s plan, however, included another component — he called for electing a new president for Lebanon, even considering it a priority before a ceasefire with Israel.

The president in Lebanon is also the commander-in-chief of the army, which is why many many army chiefs of staff were elected to the presidency in the past. Historically, the president’s relationship with the army’s command influenced the role played by the armed forces, and this relationship has been especially crucial in the case of Hezbollah.

In the last years of Hezbollah’s guerrilla campaign against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon between 1998 and 2000, the Lebanese army played a role in covering safe routes for Hezbollah’s fighters in and out of the occupied area and in holding key positions. This support by the army to Hezbollah’s resistance was the result of the direction and influence of the country’s president, Emile Lahoud, who had served as chief of staff of the army a few years earlier and refused to obey orders to clash with and disarm Hezbollah’s fighters.

The position of the Lebanese president, his influence on the army’s performance, and his relationship with the resistance have always been at the heart of Israeli and U.S. attempts to intervene in Lebanese politics. It is not the first time that the U.S. and Israel have pressured for the election of a new Lebanese president as it is under Israeli attack. The presidency ploy is a worn U.S. tool for attempting to change Lebanon’s political landscape and to make it more Israel-friendly.

When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied its capital, Beirut, after the withdrawal of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Lebanese parliament met to elect a new president — quite literally, under the watchful eye of Israeli tanks. The parliament building was non-functional, and the Lebanese representatives had to meet with an incomplete quorum in the building of the military school to elect Bashir Gemayel as president.

Gemayel was the leader of the far-right anti-Palestinian Phalange party, or Kataeb. The Phalangists had helped Israel plan the invasion of Lebanon and fought on Israel’s side in the 1982 war. Gemayel had traveled to Israel several times to meet with Israeli leaders and committed to signing a peace treaty with Israel as soon as he became president.

Gemayel was the strongman of the anti-Palestinian Lebanese right, and he was the only leader with enough support and force to carry out Israel’s strategy in Lebanon. His assassination 22 days after his election and before he was sworn in was one of the most devastating blows to Israel’s plans to bring Lebanon under Israeli influence. In revenge for Gemayel’s death, the Phalangist militias entered the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in the periphery of Beirut under Israeli cover. There, they committed the now infamous Sabra and Shatilla Massacre, slaughtering between 2,000 and 3,500 Palestinian refugees.

Following the end of the Lebanese Civil War in 1989, the parties who had fought against each other entered into a power-sharing arrangement. Meanwhile, the nascent Lebanese resistance group, Hezbollah — which started as an offshoot of the Shiite Amal militia during an episode of violence called the War of the Camps — increased its popularity and political influence. This influence grew exponentially after Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied Lebanese south, which marked the first victory of an Arab resistance force against Israeli occupation. By the beginning of the 2000s, Hezbollah had become a political party that ran for elections, secured parliamentary representation, and forged alliances with other Lebanese forces. Political divisions in Lebanon began to appear once again on both sides of the question of the resistance, often assimilated by its antagonists to Syrian, and later Iranian, influence in the region.

The identity of Lebanon’s president became a central issue again, especially after the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon, during which Emile Lahoud’s presidency provided strong political support for Hezbollah. Lahoud finished his term the following year amid strong political division. The state of fragmentation in Lebanese politics was so endemic that the president’s chair remained vacant for an entire year. The crisis was partially resolved with the election of the army’s chief of staff, Michael Suleiman, in 2008, who remained neutral.

Forty-two years after the first election of a Lebanese president at the behest of Israel, not much has changed. Lebanon is again under attack, and the resistance continues to be a central point of division over the future of the country and its position in the broader region. Although Hezbollah insists that its resistance is tied to the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza, both Israel and the U.S. continue to look for ways to neutralize Lebanon through internal divisions and political disagreements.

As Israeli army officials begin to voice their demands to end the war — a war that is hitting a wall in the villages and mountains of southern Lebanon — it seems that Hezbollah’s adversaries continue to bet on Israel’s military capacity to bring about a “day after Hezbollah.” Perhaps more confidently than Israel itself.