10 years after the Second Lebanon War, Israel isn’t in Hezbollah’s sights
Though the Syrian inferno has hardened the Shiite militia into a powerful army, its future is cloudy, and it can ill afford another round of hostilities with the IDF just now
Avi Issacharoff, The Times of Israel's Middle East analyst, fills the same role for Walla, the leading portal in Israel. He is also a guest commentator on many different radio shows and current affairs programs on television. Until 2012, he was a reporter and commentator on Arab affairs for the Haaretz newspaper. He also lectures on modern Palestinian history at Tel Aviv University, and is currently writing a script for an action-drama series for the Israeli satellite Television "YES." Born in Jerusalem, he graduated cum laude from Ben Gurion University with a B.A. in Middle Eastern studies and then earned his M.A. from Tel Aviv University on the same subject, also cum laude. A fluent Arabic speaker, Avi was the Middle East Affairs correspondent for Israeli Public Radio covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war in Iraq and the Arab countries between the years 2003-2006. Avi directed and edited short documentary films on Israeli television programs dealing with the Middle East. In 2002 he won the "best reporter" award for the "Israel Radio” for his coverage of the second intifada. In 2004, together with Amos Harel, he wrote "The Seventh War - How we won and why we lost the war with the Palestinians." A year later the book won an award from the Institute for Strategic Studies for containing the best research on security affairs in Israel. In 2008, Issacharoff and Harel published their second book, entitled "34 Days - The Story of the Second Lebanon War," which won the same prize.
A series of explosions shook the village of Al-Ka’a, on the Lebanese side of the Syria-Lebanon border, and the sound of gunfire pierced the air. Suicide bombers, evidently members of the Islamic State, attempted to attack targets of the Lebanese army, which was operating in the area in coordination with Hezbollah on June 26. Eight suicide attacks were attempted within 24 hours, and one of the militants was captured alive.
That inconceivably large number illustrates the new security situation that Hezbollah has been coping with in recent years, together with the long road that it has traveled since the end of the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006.
Ten years have passed since the billboards in Hezbollah’s Dahiya stronghold announced “Victory from Allah” when the war ended, and Hezbollah is no longer the same organization. As far as it is concerned, the main security threat is the Islamic State (and other radical Sunni groups, such as Al-Nusra). The most important front is no longer the southern border with Israel. Instead, it is in Syria, along with the constant fear that the Islamic State or similar groups will trickle into Lebanon.
The suicide bombers in Al-Ka’a were just one example in an ocean of such attackers, some of whom have succeeded, while others have attempted to strike Shiite targets inside Lebanon as well as in Hezbollah’s stronghold. That would be “Al-murraba al-amni” (the security quarter) in the Shiite suburb of Dahiya, south of Lebanon’s capital, where Hezbollah’s offices and headquarters are located. Hezbollah, which started out in the 1980s as a terrorist organization that specialized in suicide attacks, must now cope with the very threat that it imported to the Middle East.
Hezbollah has gone through several incarnations since then. It focused on guerrilla warfare against Israeli troops in the 1990s. And after Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in May 2000, it adopted a new method of operation: digging underground in southern Lebanon (in areas protected by the guise of “nature reserves”), and acquiring rockets in order to deter Israel.
Hezbollah indulged its desire to attack Israeli troops from time to time in an attempt to create solidarity among the Lebanese and Palestinians until the war in 2006, which began with the kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldiers. Hezbollah upgraded its deterrent power in the years after the war, arming itself with a massive quantity of rockets of all kinds. Some believe that it has 150,000 rockets in its possession. It has placed the rockets and missiles in Shiite residential areas, villages, and towns in southern Lebanon and in areas such as Ka’a, which became its site of “emergency warehouses.” The purpose was to prepare for another round of fighting against Israel, which many people believed was only a matter of time.
The fallout from the Syrian civil war
But then the civil war in Syria started. March 2011 saw the first demonstrations in the Daraa and Horan region that quickly swelled into a turbulent wave of protest throughout the country, inspired by the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen.
But unlike the other Arab despots, Syria’s Bashar Assad refused to give in and step down. Thus Syria became an unprecedented killing field, and when Iran’s Revolutionary Guard stepped in to prop him up, it also volunteered Hezbollah to fight its war against citizens who were fed up with the Syrian regime, and later against the many radical groups that cropped up on Syrian soil.
In the first stage, at least, Hezbollah contented itself with sending several hundred combat soldiers to Syria, mainly to strategic locations around Damascus. But a series of horrendous terror attacks by radical Sunni groups against Hezbollah targets in Dahiya, together with Islamic State’s first victories in Syria and Iraq, led the group to understand that if it didn’t take its fight against its Sunni foes to Syria, it would find itself fighting IS and others like it in the suburbs of Beirut. Thus was born a decision that changed Hezbollah’s direction.
Hezbollah has been investing enormous resources in fighting in Syria. It has garnered no meaningful accomplishments except keeping Assad alive (which apparently would not have happened without the Russians’ involvement). Israeli officials believe that one-third of Hezbollah’s fighting force is on Syrian soil. We can only imagine the logistics required to maintain such a force: food, clothing, equipment, weapons. Hezbollah had to move all those things over the years from Lebanon to Syria — a distance of hundreds of kilometers. Hezbollah’s various units leave the front from time to time to go home to Lebanon, and other units are sent out in their place, requiring enormous military transports.
Hezbollah matured during the civil war in Syria, transforming itself from just another terrorist group into an army in all essential ways. But along with the benefits, the decision to invest so much effort in Syria also exacted a heavy price. First, approximately 1,500-1,600 Hezbollah fighters have lost their lives in the war, and the number of wounded is estimated in the thousands. In other words, about another third of Hezbollah’s fighting force is out of commission due to the fighting. These numbers keep growing, and every day Hezbollah combat troops are sent back home to Lebanon in coffins covered with yellow flags, and are given state funerals.
Besides the economic cost and the price in human life, there are also political ramifications, which are for crucial for Hezbollah and its leader. When Hassan Nasrallah was appointed secretary general (after his predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi, was assassinated by Israel in 1992) at the tender age of 33, he decided that Hezbollah would enter Lebanese politics. His decision stemmed from a desire to control Lebanon’s power centers from within having been elected — and loved — by the populace.
That strategy succeeded to varying degrees at least until 2006, and perhaps as much as a year after the war. But then, the rift between Hezbollah and the March 14 Alliance widened, as did the rifts between Hezbollah and the other ethnic groups: the Sunnis, of course; some of the Christians; and some of the Druze. After tensions rose between the various sides, Hezbollah did not hesitate to use military force to take over the government quarter in Beirut in 2008, sending a message to the government that from that point onward, nothing could be done without its blessing. Since that time, Hezbollah has become a state within a state, and its decision to intervene in the Syrian civil war only widened the gap between the Lebanon of Hezbollah and the Lebanon of the rest of the Lebanese.
Hezbollah controls Lebanon to some degree, though certainly not with the inhabitants’ agreement or support. Also, thanks to the power struggles within Lebanon, Hezbollah has for all practical purposes paralyzed the political system. Elections have not been held there for many years, there is no sitting president, and the prime minister has been considered an acting prime minister for quite a few years. The waste disposal crisis, which saw a failure to remove garbage for months last summer — only one example of the paralysis of the government and political system — emphasized how convenient it was for Hezbollah to maintain the state of paralysis. So it is likely that while Hezbollah does not enjoy the level of support it had in 2006, its leaders no longer care much.
Hezbollah is also benefiting from the Syrian war, of course. It has accumulated enormous combat experience in the arena there, improving its methods of operation and learning how to conquer territory, clear an urban area, and use tanks and artillery, and its technological capabilities have increased thanks to the Syrian and Russian armies. It also runs a fleet of drones, and it has a separate communications network in Lebanon that affords it some freedom from espionage attempts.
Today, Hezbollah is even stronger than the Syrian army. Should it succeed in mounting a surprise attack on Israel’s northern border, its ability to cause severe casualties or even overrun a community and take hostages, is much higher than in the past.
Generations of Israeli troops have drilled, from basic training on, the takeover of a “Syrian pita” — a fortified position atop a high dome — in preparation for a possible war with Syria. Another scenario spoke of a Syrian commando unit attempting to conquer territory on the Golan Heights. It seems that this basic training will have to be adapted to the possibility that in the event of a war, Hezbollah will try to capture an Israeli community and massacre its inhabitants.
Despite fall from grace, Nasrallah still on top
In a television interview that he gave immediately after the Second Lebanon War, Nasrallah admitted that had he known that war would be the price of kidnapping two soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, Hezbollah would not have acted. While Nasrallah’s statement may have been a slip of the tongue, it seemed likely at the time that many Lebanese would call him to account for the very decision to go to war.
Indeed, like Hezbollah, Nasrallah is not as popular as he used to be. He has gone from being the most admired leader in the Middle East at the end of the Second Lebanon War to being one of the most hated people in the region, certainly among the Sunni states. He is perceived as a foolhardy adventurer who leans solely on Iran and does Tehran’s bidding. His credibility was cast into doubt more than once, and his images have been burned in demonstrations throughout the Sunni world because of its role in the massacre of Sunni Syrian civilians.
Still, it does not look as though his status has changed substantially among the Shiite community in Lebanon or within Hezbollah. No opposition to Nasrallah has arisen within the organization, and the Shiite Amal movement is paltry competition. He gives many interviews and speeches, evidently in an effort to convince the Shiites of the justice of his cause. Hardly a week goes by without Nasrallah appearing in a recorded speech in one place or another, to commemorate a martyr or mark a holiday. He was and remains the face of Hezbollah as well as its main decision-maker.
Yet, it is hard to imagine Nasrallah making a significant decision about Hezbollah without Iran’s blessing. If people once believed that what he most cared about was Lebanon, it has become increasingly obvious that he is an instrument of Iran, bound to execute decisions made in Tehran, most of which he agrees with, but some that he doesn’t.
Nasrallah remains almost the sole figure in Hezbollah. While his deputy, Sheikh Naim Qassem, may enjoy some status in the Shiite community, he is not expected to pose any real competition in the near future. Other dominant figures, such as military department chiefs Imad Mughniyeh and Mustafa Badreddine, were assassinated (Mughniyeh’s killing was attributed to Israel and Badreddine’s remains a mystery). Since their successors were relatively inexperienced, much-younger men who are unknown by the general public, Nasrallah’s status as the prime decision-maker only grew stronger.
Another war with Israel? Not so fast
In early July 2006, it was hard to find a Lebanese or Israeli commentator who would have bet that a war between Israel and Hezbollah was imminent. The prevailing assumption was that Hezbollah would not dare to start anything just before Lebanon’s tourist season. We were all wrong. A foolhardy attack by Hezbollah on the morning of July 12, 2006, near Milepost 105 led to a war that lasted for 34 days. Since then, Hezbollah has taken care to avoid attacking Israeli targets except in retaliation for Israeli attacks inside Lebanese territory.
Despite the mistake we commentators made back then, we can cautiously venture that Hezbollah has no intention of starting a war this summer. One consideration may be, as it was then, the economic issue and the tourist season that is about to begin in Lebanon, which enjoys an average of 2.5 million tourists per year, though the numbers are in decline due to the tough security situation. A war with Israel would definitely not improve those numbers.
But unlike the Second Lebanon War, that is not the main point. The most important issue in Hezbollah’s decision-making, it is clear, is the situation in Syria and the war against Islamic State. As long as its people are fighting and dying in battle in Syria, it is hard to imagine Nasrallah being dragged once again into another stupid escapade against Israel. He has the ability to bombard every point in Israel with the abundant store of rockets and missiles in his possession. But even he realizes that in the new reality that has been foisted upon him, opening a new front with Israel could lead to his military defeat not only against the Israeli army but also against the radical Sunnis in Syria.
