GS Paper - II

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israeli forces would continue to strike Lebanon with “full force” until the Shiite militant group Hezbollah stops firing rockets at Israel. Israeli military vehicles were transporting tanks and armoured vehicles toward the northern border with Lebanon, indicating an imminent escalation of hostilities. The Israel-Hezbollah conflict has deep roots in the history of southern Lebanon.

Wars in 1970s, 1980s

• The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 was accompanied by the violent displacement of more than 750,000 Palestinian Arabs in the event known as the Nakba, or catastrophe. Many of those who were displaced settled in south Lebanon.
• Lebanon had a large Christian population (it is estimated to be more than 40% at present), and conflicts between the Palestinians and Christian militias were fuelled by Soviet support for the Arabs and US backing for the Christian coalition.
• In the 1960s and 70s, militants affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) also began to build a base in south Lebanon, which they used as a launchpad for attacks on northern Israeli towns during this period.
• In March 1978, in response to a massacre of Israelis near Tel Aviv by Palestinian militants based in Lebanon, Israel invaded south Lebanon.
• In a short war that followed, Israeli forces pushed the PLO back from south Lebanon, creating a buffer north of Israel.
• But the PLO attacks from Lebanon continued and, four years later, Israel mounted another invasion, intending this time to drive the PLO out of Lebanon altogether.
• The Israel Defence Forces (IDF), along with their Lebanese Christian allies, laid siege to Beirut, forcing the evacuation of PLO leaders.
• By 1985, Israel had withdrawn from most of Lebanon but maintained a 15-20-km wide security zone in south Lebanon to prevent cross-border attacks.
• This area was patrolled by the South Lebanon Army (SLA), a Christian militia allied with Israel.
• However, this occupation became a lengthy entanglement that fuelled resistance from various groups and led to the rise of Hezbollah.

Emergence of Hezbollah

• Hezbollah, the “Party of God”, was formed in the early 1980s in response to the Israeli occupation of Lebanon.
• The group was founded with support from Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime in Iran, which saw an opportunity to export the ideals of the Islamic revolution and challenge Israel’s dominance.
• The group’s initial goal was to resist Israeli occupation, but as it strengthened, its objectives expanded to establishing a theocratic state in Lebanon, similar to the one in Iran following the revolution of 1979.
• It also aimed to oppose Western influence in the region, wrote Augustus Richard Norton in Hezbollah: A Short History (2007).
• In 1996, a 17-day campaign by the IDF codenamed Operation Grapes of Wrath became a key moment in the Israel-Hezbollah war.
• Israel advanced militarily, but the campaign resulted in major civilian casualties. In the village of Qana in Israeli-occupied south Lebanon, more than 100 Lebanese civilians were killed after a UN compound was shelled, fuelling support for Hezbollah.