Hezbollah-Israel: An Endless War in Whose Interests? (4)
In a forthcoming series of articles, we intend to shed light on the current situation through the lens of history, steering clear of impassioned, ideological, or romanticized narratives that overlook the realities on the ground. Our aim is to give readers the tools to draw their own conclusions. In this context, it is high time to seriously challenge the sterile rhetoric of “resistance” – not with counter-rhetoric, but through a deeper approach that champions the rule of law, which can only be built on sovereignty.
The first three articles presented a reinterpretation of the events surrounding Hezbollah's rise to power, from the Taif Agreement through Operation “Settling of Accounts” and the “July Agreement” (1993), up to the eve of its second war with Israel.
Stage 5: From the “April Understanding” to a War of Attrition
Following the “April Understanding” of 1996, Hezbollah – emboldened by Iran and Syria – relentlessly pursued the war of attrition it had launched in 1991 against the Israeli army and the South Lebanon Army (SLA). Its stated objective was the liberation of the Israeli-occupied “security zone,” yet the campaign also served another purpose: to derail peace negotiations from which Iran had been excluded.
At the same time, Washington’s position remained unchanged since the Madrid and Oslo conferences, which aimed to establish a lasting peace in the Middle East.
To initiate and sustain this process, successive US administrations consistently sought to prevent any large-scale Israeli retaliation to Hezbollah attacks, wagering instead on the Syrian-Israeli peace track. The toll of this war of attrition proved heavy for all parties. Between 1996 and 2000, Israel lost 193 soldiers, the SLA 175, and Hezbollah 375.
The deadliest single episode for Israeli forces came in February 1997, when two helicopters carrying troops from Sayeret Matkal, an elite Israeli army unit, collided en route to south Lebanon. The crash killed 73 soldiers – the heaviest toll in the army’s history. The shock it triggered led Israeli public opinion to question the human cost of maintaining the “security zone.”
In September of the same year, 16 Israeli commandos from the elite Shayetet 13 unit were caught in a Hezbollah ambush at Ansariya, about 20 kilometers south of Saida; 12 were killed. The incident underscored Hezbollah’s tactical sophistication, bolstered and directly overseen by officers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Combined with the helicopter disaster, it deepened in Israel a sense of a war without a clear horizon. One consequence was the emergence of the grassroots “Arba Imaot” (“Four Mothers”) movement, founded by mourning mothers of fallen soldiers. The issue thus shifted from the military sphere to a broader societal and moral debate, in which withdrawal from Lebanon became a political demand.
The “Four Mothers” campaign forced Israeli leaders and electoral candidates to take a public stance on an unconditional withdrawal from Lebanon. Shimon Peres, followed by Benjamin Netanyahu and then Ehud Barak, before and after taking office as prime ministers, converged on a single message: withdrawal from Lebanon.
In January 1998, Benjamin Netanyahu, then prime minister, declared that “Israel is prepared to accept UN Security Council Resolution 425(1), provided an agreement can be reached with Lebanon guaranteeing the security arrangements required by Tel Aviv.” A month later, he added: “What we must do is leave Lebanon. What the world must do is threaten the Syrians if they support attacks against us.” Within the ranks of the SLA, concern was mounting. The militia increasingly anticipated an Israeli withdrawal, particularly as Tel Aviv’s forces in the security zone had been significantly scaled back.
The election of Ehud Barak in May 1999 – on a platform advocating the return of Israeli troops – marked an acceleration of the withdrawal process. Barak had pledged to bring his forces home by July 2000.
Stage 6: For Damascus and Baabda, the Israeli withdrawal was a “Zionist conspiracy”
In early January 2000, Bill Clinton brought together Ehud Barak and Farouk al-Sharaa, the Syrian foreign minister, in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. It marked the only direct Syrian-Israeli negotiations in history, and ended in failure.
During the talks, Western and Israeli intelligence services learned that Damascus had authorized Tehran to rearm Hezbollah and expand its offensive capabilities through the immediate and sustained delivery of equipment and ammunition to Damascus airport. Syrian trucks then transported the materiel to Hezbollah depots in Lebanon, under the watchful – and acquiescent – eye of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, who was fully aligned with Hafez al-Assad’s regime. Despite this, Ehud Barak ordered his army not to target the depots supplied by the Syrians and, more importantly, not to strike Syrian assets themselves. He hoped that peace talks with Damascus would resume at a later stage. Shortly afterwards, after the Israeli army attempted to assassinate Hezbollah’s military leader in south Lebanon, it carried out heavy retaliatory strikes. The Israeli security cabinet authorised a series of air raids against Hezbollah, but issued a strict prohibition on targeting Syrian objectives.
This approach earned Ehud Barak praise from Martin Indyk, then US ambassador to Israel and former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. Barak, moreover, missed no opportunity – in public and in private – to signal that he was pursuing a strategy for Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon. In response, senior figures within the Assad regime mounted an intensive campaign through their Lebanese allies, insisting that the Israeli withdrawal proposal was part of a “Zionist conspiracy” aimed at containing Syria in the same way Iraq was being contained by the United States.
In the months that followed, Emile Lahoud stepped up his interventions, denouncing what he viewed as a dangerous Israeli tactical manoeuvre. He argued that an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon without a parallel withdrawal from the Golan Heights amounted to a trap. On 9 March 2000, he declared: “Israel’s declared plans to withdraw from Lebanon are intended to sabotage the peace process.” He added that any Israeli withdrawal would be “the product of Lebanese support for the resistance (Hezbollah) and of the unity of the Lebanese-Syrian position,” rather than a genuine commitment to peace.
The paradox of Emile Lahoud’s regime lay in its full backing of Hezbollah’s guerrilla campaign to “liberate the south,” while effectively ignoring the peace process. It did not, in fact, favour an Israeli withdrawal, as the continued occupation served three key objectives: legitimising Syria’s own presence in Lebanon, sustaining Hezbollah’s narrative of resistance, and keeping Israel mired in the “Lebanese quagmire” until the Golan Heights were returned to Syria.
At that time, Hezbollah’s dominance over state institutions was still embryonic, even though the group already possessed significant military capabilities. It was Syria, however, that exercised full control over the Lebanese state. (to be continued)
(1) UN Security Council Resolution 425 was adopted following Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon, which came in response to guerrilla operations launched against Israel by Palestinian armed groups operating from Lebanese territory. These attacks had been ongoing since 1969. Resolution 425 calls for Israel’s immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Lebanon, as well as the deployment of 3,000 troops of UNIFIL (the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) at the time.
Read also:
Hezbollah-Israel: An Endless War in Whose Interests? (3)