July 12, 2021 marks 15 years since members of Hezbollah launched a cross-border raid that ended with three Israeli soldiers killed and two more abducted into Lebanese territory. After five more soldiers lost their lives in the rescue attempt, Israel was drawn into a month-long war against the Iranian-backed terrorist organization.
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The Threat Posed by Hezbollah
Since its founding in the 1980s, Hezbollah has amassed a stockpile of rockets larger than all the combined armies of Europe, carried out some of the deadliest terror attacks around the world, and now facilitates Iranian expansionism.
Led by Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah has also managed to maintain a stranglehold on Lebanese domestic politics.
Origins
Hezbollah was founded in the early 1980s by Lebanese Shiite clerics inspired by the teachings of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the radical leader of the Iran’s Islamic revolution. They received crucial assistance from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and from Syria. Their immediate goals included driving the Israeli military out of a security zone in southern Lebanon and ridding the country of international peacekeepers; their long-term goals included launching a revolutionary Islamic movement in Lebanon and destroying Israel.
Hezbollah put itself on the map with coordinated pair of suicide bombings on the morning of October 23, 1983. The truck bombings of the Beirut barracks of US and French peacekeeping forces killed 241 US servicemen, mostly Marines, 58 French military personnel, and six civilians. Hezbollah’s prominence rose even more when, four months later, the Western peacekeepers withdrew from Lebanon.
UN Resolution 1701: A Toothless Tool Which Allows Hezbollah to Prepare for the Next War
Following the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1701, at the time perceived as a strongly worded document. It was aimed at not just maintaining the ceasefire, but of strengthening the hands of the government in Beirut by endorsing and calling for the central government to assert control over the entire country.
However, for the most part 1701 has reflected the toothless inability of the international body to take those words and effectively implement them on the ground.
The 2006 war was not between two countries, but between Israel and the terrorist Hezbollah organization headed by Hassan Nasrallah that is funded, trained and armed by Iran. Hezbollah is not under the control of the Lebanese government, is not part of the Lebanese Armed Forces, and thus considers itself not obligated at all to the document. Its terrorist activities have been documented for years.
Resolution 1701: In Its Own Words
Two paragraphs in the UNSC resolution appeared to have been directly aimed at Hezbollah:
- “security arrangements to prevent the resumption of hostilities, including the establishment between the Blue Line and the Litani river of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the Government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL …”
- “full implementation of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and of (UNSC) resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of 27 July 2006, there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese State.”
In short, 1701 calls for the disarming of Hezbollah and the deployment of the Lebanese army to exert sovereignty – especially in the south of the country along the Lebanon-Israel border. That area is monitored by UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon that is tasked with monitoring the area and whose heavy presence was intended to dissuade militias.
