Hezbollah-Israel: An Endless War in Whose Interests? (14)

This series of articles aims to provide a clearer understanding of the current situation on the Lebanese scene, viewed through the lens of history and free from passionate, ideological, or romanticized narratives that miss the realities on the ground — leaving readers to draw their own conclusions.

The previous thirteen installments offered a reexamination of the events surrounding Hezbollah's rise to power, from the Taif Agreement through the incomplete implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 in 2006.

Since the end of the 33-day war with Israel in 2006, Hezbollah has worked to rebuild itself in terms of weaponry, reorganization, and redeployment. In short, it took a serious blow during that war, yet surprised Israel with its military capabilities. Over the following two years, it grew into a genuine armed force of regional stature, thanks to four key factors: battlefield experience; Iranian support; the Syrian land bridge (under the Assad regime) linking Tehran to Beirut; and the understanding between its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and Lebanese President Emile Lahoud at the time.

As a result, the logistical supply corridors from Syria were reactivated, triggering both a quantitative and qualitative leap in the pro-Iranian militia's arsenal.

Some estimates suggest its rocket stockpile increased tenfold, rising from roughly 15,000 in 2006 to more than 150,000 projectiles by 2018. This included not only rockets in the traditional sense, but also new longer-range missiles it had not previously possessed — among them precision missiles, notably the Fateh-110, manufactured locally by converting older Zelzal models through the addition of in-flight guidance systems and the replacement of fixed fins with movable ones. It also acquired precise, long-range anti-ship missiles such as the Chinese Silkworm and its Iranian copies, and even Russian Yakhont missiles with a range of 300 km.

Added to this arsenal were suicide drones, missile-launching drones, reconnaissance drones, and more — as well as portable surface-to-air missiles of the MANPAD type.

In terms of redeployment, the Shia militia shifted its military infrastructure into the urban fabric and within populated areas.

The Shia towns and villages of the south and Beirut's southern suburbs were transformed into complex, carefully concealed military-urban fortresses, where civilians and fighters are intertwined in a web that is difficult to unravel — making it virtually impossible to draw a clear line between combatants and non-combatants.

Hezbollah also made increasing use of civilian front organizations to carry out civilian surveillance patrols, the most well-known of which is "Green Without Borders," registered as an NGO dedicated to environmental protection and reforestation.

The outposts and nurseries of this NGO, located along the Blue Line, long served to conceal Hezbollah's military infrastructure, ammunition depots, and combat tunnels.

Furthermore, under the pretext of protecting private property or reforestation zones, its members routinely blocked UNIFIL inspectors from gaining access throughout the two decades following the 2006 war.

Finally, Hezbollah fighters maintained a plainclothes presence at the entrances to camouflaged positions and underground installations.

The constraints faced by UNIFIL

UNIFIL in its new, reinforced form under Resolution 1701 never offered, from the outset, a genuine solution to the disarmament of Hezbollah.

This is because it is not a combat force — operating as it does under Chapter 6 rather than Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter.

Its European contributors, particularly France, Italy, Spain, and Germany, refused to allow their Blue Helmets to act in place of the State in carrying out coercive disarmament. Moreover, the UN mandate did not permit systematic search operations.

This situation led UNIFIL to coexist with Hezbollah, not without indirect contacts between the two parties through Lebanese intelligence services, and through mayors and NGOs affiliated with Hezbollah — especially after the start of the war in Syria and the proliferation of Islamist fighters on both sides of the Lebanese-Syrian border.

In this context, UNIFIL suffered at least three attacks in 2011, leaving 16 members of the Italian and French contingents wounded. The perpetrators were militiamen linked to Al-Qaeda, notably the Palestinian Abdallah Azzam Brigades, operating out of Palestinian refugee camps in southern Lebanon.

The political aftermath of the 2006 war

On the political front, the pressure exerted by Hezbollah, the Amal movement, and their ally Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement — just three months after the 33-day war — took the form of an institutional blockade aimed at durably weakening the executive branch.

As early as November 2006, five Shia ministers from Hezbollah and Amal, along with Christian minister Yaacoub Sarraf, a close ally of President Emile Lahoud, resigned. They denounced the absence of a "blocking third" (1) in their favor within the Council of Ministers and declared the government illegitimate.

This undermined the legitimacy of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and forced him to govern from a position of weakness. From December 2006 onward, a massive sit-in in downtown Beirut surrounding the Grand Serail, combined with Nabih Berri's decision not to convene Parliament, paralyzed legislative activity and prevented the presidential election — scheduled for September–October 2007 — from taking place, thereby deepening the political deadlock.

At the same time, the government's inability to dismantle Hezbollah's private telecommunications network — deemed illegal — turned what was meant to be an assertion of state sovereignty into a casus belli.

The government's decision to delegitimize that network on May 5, 2008, triggered a military response from Hezbollah on May 7, 2008.

The May 7 power grab

On May 7 and 8, 2008, Hezbollah seized control of large swaths of West Beirut, attacked the offices of the Future Movement, and once again besieged Prime Minister Fouad Siniora by force of arms at the government palace — demonstrating that any attempt to militarily weaken the pro-Iranian militia would lead to the collapse of public order.

Faced with the specter of all-out war and state collapse, Siniora — in agreement with the very ministers who had called for the dismantling of Hezbollah's clandestine network — rescinded the decrees targeting that network and accepted, under Qatari mediation, the Doha Agreement of May 21, 2008.

The Doha Agreement

In the wake of the May 7, 2008 power grab, Qatar — having positioned itself as a mediator in Arab and Middle Eastern disputes and asserting its soft power — summoned Lebanon's leaders to Doha.

The efforts of its emir ultimately led to an agreement that imposed the formation of a national unity government granting Hezbollah a "blocking third" (1), or veto power, within the Council of Ministers.

The same agreement prohibited the use of weapons to settle internal disputes — a clause that had been repeated in every Lebanese inter-factional agreement since 1975 and had long since become little more than a formality.

Nevertheless, the status of the pro-Iranian party's weapons was enshrined and protected under the pretext of "confronting Israel," effectively making the issue untouchable.

Ultimately, this "compromise" had not been a simple tactical choice but was rather the result of an entanglement of military and political imperatives, among them the need to break a constitutional deadlock, ensure security stability, and preserve the (apparent) national unity that was, in reality, non-existent in practice.

Thus, the first sovereignist government after the end of the Syrian occupation was forced to bow to the realities and the facts on the ground.

As a result, Hezbollah continued to wield the "resistance" argument for one single purpose: to intimidate its opponents and maintain, at minimal cost, its grip over political decision-making in Lebanon.

(1) The "blocking third" (or guarantee third) within the Lebanese government stems from a contested interpretation of the Lebanese Constitution as amended in 1990 by the Taif Agreement. The phrase "blocking third" does not appear verbatim in the text, but rests on two major constitutional pillars. On one hand, Article 65 stipulates that decisions on 14 "fundamental" matters — such as the electoral law or constitutional amendments — require a mandatory two-thirds majority of cabinet members, which automatically grants veto power to any coalition holding one third of ministers plus one. On the other hand, Article 69 provides for the automatic resignation of the entire executive if more than one third of its members resign. This institutional mechanism, originally designed to safeguard the communal coexistence pact, was politically enshrined in the Doha Agreement of May 2008, elevating this mathematical quota into a sine qua non condition for government formation, thereby granting Hezbollah veto power in every government formed from 2008 through 2025.