Hezbollah: Resisting Until Those It Claims to Defend Disappear?

There comes a point in every war when the central question is no longer one of courage, ideology or even the claimed legitimacy of the struggle. It becomes much simpler: what concrete outcome can this war still achieve?

That is the question Hezbollah should be asking itself today.

For decades, the group has presented its arsenal as a form of “resistance” intended to protect Lebanon from Israel. But resistance has strategic meaning only if it can either defeat its adversary or impose a sufficiently high cost on it to force a lasting change in its behavior.

The current balance of power, however, is overwhelmingly against Hezbollah.

It would be wrong to claim that the group no longer has any military capabilities. It still has rockets, drones, explosives, experienced fighters and a real ability to inflict damage. Some of its drone attacks have, in fact, posed challenges for the Israeli military.

But the ability to inflict damage is not the same as the ability to win.

Facing Hezbollah is a state with a modern air force, satellites, electronic intelligence, cyber capabilities, missile defense systems, a substantial defense and technology sector, and the ability to integrate intelligence, data and automated systems into its operations.

The imbalance has become so pronounced that the question is no longer whether Hezbollah can still strike Israel. It can. The real question is whether it can prevent Israel from destroying far more in Lebanon than Hezbollah itself is capable of destroying in Israel.

Recent events offer a troubling answer.

When Hezbollah strikes, Israel has a far greater capacity to retaliate. And that retaliation does not destroy only fighters or military installations: it strikes areas where civilians live.

This is where the paradox begins.

Who is Hezbollah still protecting?

Hezbollah claims to defend the Shiite community and Lebanon. Yet the longer the war goes on, the more the areas with large Shiite populations become the battleground: the South, the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs.

The fighting in 2026 has already triggered mass displacement among the Shiite population. Israel is now explicitly threatening to expand its occupation of the South in the event of further attacks and to extend the destruction to Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut.

This raises an almost unbearable question: at what point does an organization created to protect a population begin, through its own strategy, to put that very population at risk?

A people cannot be defended through missiles alone. It must also be protected by safeguarding its homes, its land, its villages, its schools, its businesses, its children and its future. What would be the point of declaring that the resistance had not surrendered if, by the end of this resistance, part of the South was occupied, dozens of villages destroyed, the southern suburbs laid waste, and hundreds of thousands of Lebanese displaced for the long term?

An organization can survive militarily and still suffer a historic loss.

The State and the Army

The second danger is the Lebanese state itself.

Hezbollah is not only putting its own community at risk. It is also confronting the Lebanese state with a potentially explosive dilemma.

The government is now seeking to reassert the fundamental principle that weapons must be under state control and that the decision to go to war must rest with the state. President Joseph Aoun himself has defended the principle of disarming armed groups as part of an Israeli withdrawal and the restoration of Lebanese sovereignty.

But what happens if Hezbollah continues to reject this approach? The Lebanese army could find itself facing the worst possible choice: allowing an autonomous military organization to continue operating on Lebanese territory or entering into confrontation with part of its own society.

This is precisely what must be avoided.

The army is one of Lebanon’s last truly national institutions. It is a multi-confessional institution, and its unity has been a red line since the civil war. The memory of its sectarian fragmentation in 1976 explains its extreme caution in the face of any internal confrontation.

Exposing the army to the risk of an internal conflict would be a historic mistake.

A Fundamental Contradiction

So why continue?

That, ultimately, is the central question.

If Hezbollah cannot destroy Israel; if it cannot establish military superiority; if it cannot prevent Israel from striking deep inside Lebanon; if the continuation of the war causes more destruction in Lebanon than in Israel; if it threatens Shiite areas before all others; if it prevents the Lebanese state from re-establishing its monopoly over military decision-making… what rational purpose can this war still serve?

The answer may be that we are no longer operating within a strictly Lebanese framework. Hezbollah remains tied to a regional strategic architecture built around Iran. Its own leaders have explicitly linked the fate of the organization to that of the Islamic Republic.

A fundamental contradiction therefore emerges: the strategic interests of a regional organization do not necessarily coincide with those of Lebanon, or even with those of Lebanese Shiites. And that is where the heart of the problem lies.

The Ultimate Paradox

I do not believe anyone can seriously claim, without evidence, that Hezbollah wants Lebanon’s Shiite community to disappear. But a far more troubling question must be asked: what if its strategy were gradually leading to precisely that outcome, even without this being its intention?

A policy must be judged not only by its intentions, but also by its consequences. If every new attack brings more bombing; if every political refusal leads to further occupation; if every escalation triggers more displacement; if villages in the South gradually become uninhabitable; if Beirut’s southern suburbs are repeatedly targeted… then the logic of this course of action becomes absurd. Worse still, it paradoxically begins to serve the interests of those Hezbollah claims to be fighting.

If Israel’s strategic objective is to ensure that no threat to its northern border can persist, what could serve that objective better than a southern Lebanon gradually emptied of its population, Hezbollah’s infrastructure destroyed, a community exhausted by successive wars, and a Lebanese state unable to fully exercise its sovereignty?

That is the terrible paradox: by continuing to fight Israel without the means to defeat it, Hezbollah risks creating the very strategic conditions Israel seeks.

The choice between “resistance” and “capitulation” must therefore be rejected as a false one.

The real choice is between a war with no prospect of victory and a strategy for national survival.

Laying down arms under an agreement that guarantees an Israeli withdrawal, restoring state authority, fully integrating the Shiite community into a national project, rebuilding the South, protecting its residents, and making the Lebanese army the sole force responsible for defending the country’s borders would not mean the disappearance of the Shiites. It would mean exactly the opposite: protecting their future.

The real question today is no longer how many missiles Hezbollah can still launch. It is how many more villages Lebanon can lose before realizing that a war that cannot be won may ultimately destroy the very people in whose name it is being waged.

Sources

Reuters – Elbit developing hardware to combat Hezbollah drones (26 May 2026).

Reuters – Netanyahu comments on Lebanon / Hezbollah escalation (14 October 2026).

Reuters – President Joseph Aoun and Lebanese sovereignty / disarmament (19 July 2026).

Reuters – Lebanese army, politics and risk of internal fragmentation (19 November 2024).

United Nations Digital Library – document S/2026/160.