[News] How Powerful is Lebanese Hezbollah and Why Does It Exist?

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How Powerful is Lebanese Hezbollah and Why Does It Exist?January 8, 2024
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Hezbollah's military drills in southern Lebanon. (Image: Palestine
Chronicle, via Hezbollah military media)

*By Robert Inlakesh
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/robert-inlakesh>*

Being the first Arab fighting force to inflict defeat upon the Israeli
army, Hezbollah is considered an existential threat to Israel in the event
of full-scale war.

Although it is widely misunderstood as a proxy force of the Islamic
Republic of Iran, the party was an organic Lebanese response to the Israeli
occupation and invasion in 1982, now having evolved into a fully-fledged
military power.

Led by its prolific speaker, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, who spearheads
Hezbollah in the position of Secretary-General, the Lebanese Resistance
group is believed to be in possession of hundreds of thousands of missiles;
an unknown number of which are modern precision-guided munitions.
*Israel’s War of Aggression*

In 1982, Israel launched a war of aggression against Lebanon, with the aim
of dismantling the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that had based
itself out of the Lebanese Capital, Beirut.

Following a brutal onslaught by the Israeli military, resulting in the
deaths of roughly 20,000 Palestinians and Lebanese, the majority of whom
were civilians, Tel Aviv’s goal was accomplished and the PLO leadership was
forced out of the country.

However, what came next was not a simple withdrawal of the invading army
from Lebanese territory, in fact, quite the contrary.

With no one left to defend them, Israeli forces used allied Christian
militias to commit massacres, mainly against Palestinian refugees and
Lebanese Shia, the most infamous case being the Sabra and Shatila camp
massacre. Additionally, Israel decided to illegally occupy the south of
Lebanon.
*The Party of God*

The horrifying slaughter and illegal occupation of Lebanese territory then
gave birth to a new movement, Hezbollah, which translates to ‘the Party of
God’ in English.

Lebanese Hezbollah rose to prominence as a resistance group, recruiting its
members from the economically marginalized Shia Muslim community and came
to represent the majority of Lebanon’s Shias, overtaking the Amal Movement
in popularity.

In the year 2000, following over 15 years of armed struggle against the
illegal occupation forces, Hezbollah made history by forcing the Israelis
to withdraw from the majority of southern Lebanon, with the exception of
the occupied Shebaa Farms region.
*Forced to Retreat*

In 2006, after Hezbollah’s elite forces pulled off a cross-border military
operation, capturing and killing a number of Israeli soldiers, with the
intention of trading the captives for Lebanese and Palestinian political
detainees, Israel invaded Lebanon once again.

Hezbollah shocked the world by becoming the first Arab fighting force to
ever have inflicted defeat on the Israeli army in a war.

The group surprised the Israelis with new kinds of weapons that had not
been revealed to be in Hezbollah’s arsenal, eventually inflicting such
losses on the invading forces that they were forced to retreat from
Lebanese territory once again.

Since 2006, the Israeli army has never dared to re-invade Lebanon, for fear
of the repercussions.
*Military Power*

In 2022, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah revealed that the armed wing of Hezbollah
maintains a battle ready ground force of at least 100,000 men. The party’s
leader stipulated that this did not include the many allied militia forces
and the group’s Special Forces units, known as the Radwan Forces.

As of now, the true size of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile arsenal is
unknown and is only based upon rough estimates.

Since October 8, Hezbollah’s forces have been engaged in daily battles
along the border areas of northern Israel, having carried out hundreds of
strikes with suicide drones, guided anti-tank weapons, rockets and mortars,
as well as sniper fire.

Hundreds of buildings in Israeli settlements have been damaged as the
result of the munitions fired from Lebanon, and Hezbollah claims to have
inflicted over 2,000 casualties against Israeli soldiers and settlers.

Unlike is the case with the Palestinian armed groups based in Gaza, it is
understood that Hezbollah has the capabilities of carrying out strikes
against Israeli cities that can match the destruction against Lebanon.

If a war is to break out between Lebanon and Israel, Hezbollah is believed
to have the capacity to level entire suburbs in cities such as Haifa and
Tel Aviv.

Often described as simply a proxy army of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the
group’s political wing is engaged in the Lebanese democratic process and
has sitting members of parliament.

It is also governed by its own independent Shura council and the connection
to Iran comes in the form of financial and military support, in addition to
a close religious alignment.

Hezbollah maintains close contact with the Palestinian Resistance factions
and is believed to have provided them with weapons and training, as well as
logistical support.

*(The Palestine Chronicle)*


*– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He
focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this
article to The Palestine Chronicle. *
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