Hezbollah is the Arabic transliteration of the Party of God, the name of the Lebanese Shiite political and paramilitary formation that this week suffered an unprecedented attack attributed to Israel. Some 5,000 searches and seizures have been carried out. walkie-talkies exploded, killing more than 30 people and wounding thousands more. As Israeli warplanes flew over Beirut, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday promised a “serious reckoning” that would be announced “when the time comes.” He thus hinted that his organization would be considering its response if it decides to abandon the doctrine that its main ally, Iran, defines as “strategic patience”: avoiding escalation if it goes against its interests.
As with the Palestinian Hamas, Israel is trying to reduce Hezbollah to a mere terrorist organisation, recalling not only its attacks on Israeli territory, but also attacks attributed to it in the past, such as one in 1983, when two truck bombs killed more than 300 American and French soldiers in their Beirut barracks. The party-militia is thus blacklisted by the United States and other countries, while the European Union considers only the military wing of the movement to be “terrorist”.
This organisation is much more, according to experts, who describe it as a Lebanese “state within a state”; a political actor that, since 2005, has participated – even with veto power – in the country’s fragile governments. It is also the best-armed militia in the Middle East and a social movement especially dedicated to the Shia population, which is the majority in the party’s strongholds in Beirut, such as the Dahiye neighbourhood in the south of the country and in the eastern Bekaa valley.
Terrorist group or resistance movement?
The militia-party that has been waging a limited war by firing rockets at Israel since the start of the Gaza war nearly a year ago emerged in 1982 from a split in the Lebanese Resistance Battalions (AMAL in Arabic), founded in the 1970s to defend the marginalized Shiite minority, today about 27% of the Lebanese population. It did so inspired by Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and with support from that country. Hezbollah’s first militants were trained by the Revolutionary Guard, the parallel army of Iran, a predominantly Shiite country.
The organisation is not, however, an Iranian invention. Its roots lie in discrimination against Shiites, but its creation was triggered by the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 to expel the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) during the country’s civil war (1975-1990). The group was born that same year “as a social movement” with three initial objectives reflected in its founding charter of 1985: “to establish an Islamic State in Lebanon, expel Israel from the occupied territories and alleviate the suffering of the Lebanese who needed it most,” stresses an article by Itxaso Domínguez de Olazábal, professor at the Carlos III University of Madrid and the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, and an expert on the Middle East.
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Many people in the region see Hezbollah as a “resistance movement.” Instead, they consider that Israel is “exerting state terrorism” with its war and “genocide” in Gaza, which has already caused more than 41,000 deaths, its targeted assassinations and its bombing of other states – Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Tunisia – stresses Haizam Amirah Fernandez, an analyst specialising in international relations in the Middle East, by telephone.
A political party
Hezbollah registered as a political party in 1992. In the municipal elections of that year, it ran in 12 districts. It won all of them and, since 2005, it has also participated in the country’s governments. Five years earlier, in 2000, Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon, which was attributed in part to its resistance actions, gave it great political credit. This aura of having “stood up to an occupying and aggressor state” [Israel],” says Amirah Fernandez, increased in 2006, after the month-long war with the Israeli army that summer. Some 1,300 Lebanese and 165 Israelis were killed. Israel razed entire villages and neighborhoods in Beirut, but the conflict ended in a stalemate and Israeli troops left Lebanon.
“The fact that [el partido-milicia] “The fact that the Lebanese people were not wiped out, despite Israel’s enormous military superiority, is what the logic of resistance is considered a victory,” the expert stresses. In 2009, in its new charter of principles, it abandoned the demand for an Islamic state and advocated a “consensual democracy”. In the 2022 elections, Hezbollah and its Shiite and Christian allies lost their hegemony in the Lebanese parliament, which was left without a clear majority. This led to a political deadlock and a power vacuum in the country’s presidency that still persists.
Defining Hezbollah as a mere terrorist group “has made it possible to justify any action against that movement,” Domínguez de Olazábal stressed, “without considering it a pragmatic and rational actor” that makes “very well thought-out” decisions.
Weapons, supermarkets and hospitals
Hezbollah’s evolution as a political player in Lebanon — with Syrian support — has not diminished its military identity. It has a vast arsenal that Washington says includes up to 100,000 missiles, many capable of reaching all of Israel, as well as tanks, heavy artillery and Iranian drones. Its leader claims that its fighters number 100,000, a figure that Western foreign ministries put at less than half, not counting its supporters, many of whom have military training. Its units include the elite Radwan force, whose leader was killed by Israel on Friday in Beirut.
The militia has extensive experience in guerrilla warfare and in urban environments, as well as being a regular army in the ranks of Bashar al-Assad during the Syrian civil war. It is militarily far inferior to Israel, which even has nuclear weapons, but it is no small enemy. An open war between the two would probably cause thousands of casualties on the Israeli side as well.
In addition to the financial aid – and weapons and training – it receives from Iran and Syria, Hezbollah has a variety of sources of income. These include funds transferred by international Islamic solidarity associations and the thriving Lebanese diaspora. It has also established what Domínguez de Olazábal defines as a “parallel economy” through control of lucrative sectors such as black market medicines and pharmacies, or the creation of its own businesses such as the supermarket chain, Al Nour Markets, where it sells Iranian and Syrian products. It also engages in illegal activities such as smuggling across the Syrian border and tax evasion. Washington has accused the group of being involved in drug trafficking, something it denies.
Hezbollah, for example, derives significant revenue from Jihad al-Binna, its development association, which carries out reconstruction and infrastructure projects. The organisation profits from public works and state projects thanks to the party’s presence in institutions, according to the British think tank Chatham House.
In a semi-failed state where political paralysis has spurred an economic crisis that has plunged 80 percent of the population into poverty, the movement’s social work partly explains the support it enjoys among a segment of the population, especially the Shia. Hezbollah runs free hospitals and clinics for its members, finances orphanages, distributes aid and pays for training centres. It even has a kind of social security system for its members, which also provides it with income: the Al Sajed card, which can be used to buy goods in Al Nour markets, and is topped up each month with the equivalent in Lebanese lira of about 200 euros. CNN summed up Hezbollah’s role in 2006 by saying that in its strongholds, it did “everything a government should do, from collecting garbage to running hospitals and repairing schools.”
