Hezbollah-Israel: An Endless War in Whose Interests? (6)
With this sixth instalment in the “Israel-Hezbollah” series, we continue to examine the current situation through the lens of history, steering clear of the impassioned, ideological or romantic narratives that often obscure realities on the ground. Readers may draw their own conclusions. Previous articles revisited Hezbollah’s rise since the Taif Agreement, its first two wars with Israel, and the withdrawal of the Israeli army from Lebanon in May 2000.
Following Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon on May 24, 2000, and at the insistence of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, the United Nations officially certified on June 16, 2000, that the pullout was complete and in full compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 425, which was thereafter deemed implemented. UNIFIL subsequently delineated an Israeli withdrawal line known as the “Blue Line,” identifying 13 disputed points between the two countries covering an area of less than one square kilometer. The line is often mistaken for the Paulet-Newcombe line, drawn in 1923 as the border separating Lebanon and Palestine under the French and British mandates.
Instead of using Israel’s withdrawal on May 24, 2000, as an opportunity to restore state sovereignty – particularly in southern Lebanon – President Émile Lahoud and the Lebanese government, both aligned with Syria, chose to provide institutional and political backing to Hezbollah under the banner of the “resistance.” That narrative risked being seriously undermined by the United Nations’ official confirmation that Israel had fully withdrawn.
Lahoud’s position perfectly suited both Syria and Iran, neither of which wanted Hezbollah stripped of its “armed struggle” slogan. Damascus was determined to preserve its leverage over Israel, whether for potential future peace negotiations or in the event of armed conflict with the Jewish state – an objective that aligned with Tehran’s efforts to strengthen the Shiite militia as its key instrument in Lebanon and across the region. Anticipating the problem, the Lebanese-Syrian security apparatus of the time – a network of senior Lebanese and Syrian intelligence officers working in tandem – came up with the argument that would allow Hezbollah to retain control over southern Lebanon as a military pressure platform against Israel. That pretext was the Shebaa hamlets, better known as the Shebaa Farms.
The Special Case of the Shebaa Hamlets
In April 2000, just weeks before Israel’s withdrawal, General Jamil al-Sayed – then head of Lebanese General Security and a close ally of President Émile Lahoud – revived Lebanon’s claim to the Shebaa hamlets in a bid to justify the continuation of Hezbollah’s “resistance.” Lebanese land registry records had in fact established since 1949 that the 62-square-kilometer area belonged to Lebanon, although it appeared on maps as Syrian territory. Israel occupied the area in 1967, at the same time as it seized the Golan Heights. That strategic shift, coordinated with Damascus – notably through General Sayed’s ties to his Syrian counterpart, General Ali Mamlouk – provided the Lebanese state with a pretext to reject the United Nations’ certification of a full Israeli withdrawal.
The Shebaa hamlets had been the subject of a border dispute between Lebanon and Syria since the French mandate period. The disagreement was never fundamentally resolved after the two countries gained independence. During the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel occupied the hamlets, where Syrian regular forces had been stationed since the early 1960s, and extended its military infrastructure on the Golan Heights to include the area. Lebanese police and customs officers had been stationed there from independence until the 1958 civil conflict, when Syrian militias and pro-Syrian Lebanese armed groups – involved in the uprising against President Camille Chamoun – forced Lebanese police and customs officers to withdraw and seized the area, using it as a military base to target the Lebanese army barracks in Marjayoun.
At the end of the 1958 war, those militias pulled back into Syrian territory, but Lebanese police and customs officers never returned. The Syrian army later established positions there, and Syria continues to include the hamlets on its military maps.
Lahoud, Architect of the “Complementarity” Between the Army and the “Resistance”
Following the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973, and up until 2000, Lebanon never formally claimed the Shebaa Farms before the United Nations as occupied territory, effectively accepting international maps that placed the area within Syria. This claim only emerged officially in 2000, with the clear aim of challenging the completeness of Israel’s withdrawal and thereby legitimizing the ensuing discourse of “resistance.”
That narrative was significantly amplified by President Émile Lahoud, the principal political guarantor of Hezbollah at the highest levels of the state. Even when he served as commander-in-chief of the army, he had already developed the concept of “complementarity” between the Shiite militia and the Lebanese regular army. In his view, the army’s role was to maintain internal order – which in practice entailed the repression of sovereigntist forces opposed to Syria and Hezbollah – while the “resistance,” namely Hezbollah, was tasked with defending the country against Israel.
Lahoud had indeed facilitated, since he had commanded the army, the transfer of Iranian weapons via Syria to Hezbollah positions in the Beqaa Valley and southern Lebanon. Despite pressure from the United Nations, he systematically refused to deploy the Lebanese army in the area vacated by Israel, arguing that doing so would effectively turn the army into a “border guard” on behalf of the Jewish state. For his part, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri acted in tandem with Lahoud, serving as Hezbollah’s legislative and diplomatic linchpin. He ensured that the ministerial statements of successive governments after the Israeli withdrawal explicitly included Lebanon’s “right to resistance to liberate its territory,” thereby legitimizing Hezbollah’s arsenal.
To reinforce the argument that the Shebaa hamlets constituted occupied territory that had to be liberated, and to impose new rules of military engagement, Hezbollah carried out a cross-border operation on October 7, 2000, just four months after the Israeli withdrawal. During the raid, it “captured” three Israeli soldiers, who were later found to have died at the time of the incident. The attack, which involved Hezbollah using UN-marked vehicles, triggered a diplomatic crisis between UNIFIL and Israel. In January 2004, a German-mediated agreement led to a prisoner exchange: Hezbollah returned the bodies of the three soldiers and released a civilian hostage, while Israel freed 435 detainees and returned the remains of 59 fighters from the Shiite militia. (to be continued)
Read also:
Hezbollah-Israel: An Endless War in Whose Interests? (5)
Hezbollah-Israel: An Endless War in Whose Interests? (4)
Hezbollah-Israel: An Endless War in Whose Interests? (3)