For four decades, Hezbollah and Israel have been in a relentless standoff, monitoring and spying on each other, humiliating and bombing each other, and assassinating members of each other if necessary. Each knows its enemy well, but the war between them has often been quiet and even secret, for military and strategic reasons, but also for economic and diplomatic reasons.
With this introduction, the newspaper Libération opened a report by Cillian Massé in which he tried to address the main stations of this long conflict, and he summarized them in 7 basic dates as follows.
February 16, 1985
An open letter to the oppressed around the world.
This letter is the official birth certificate of Hezbollah, which had been underground for a few years, as a result of what the newspaper called the “Shiite awakening” and the Iranian Islamic Revolution (1979), and the invasion of Lebanon by the Israeli army in 1982.
The open letter to the oppressed of the world outlines the ideological outlines of Hezbollah, which recognizes the fundamental principle of the Guardianship of the Jurist, claims to defend the poor and fight imperialism, and calls its enemies: the United States the “Great Satan” and Israel the “Little Satan.”
November 11, 1982
This date marks the first attack on Tyre.
It began with an explosion that destroyed the Israeli army headquarters in the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon, killing 89 people, including 75 soldiers. The Israeli army officially attributed the attack to a gas leak, but Hezbollah announced three years later that it was responsible for the attack and attributed it to the “martyr” Ahmed Qasir (17 years old), whose parents were killed during the Israeli attack in 1978.
A year later, the city of Tyre was subjected to a new attack that killed 30 people, and targeted the headquarters of the Israeli intelligence. Hezbollah attacks also hit the American embassy in Beirut in the same year, killing more than 60 people, then hit the American naval base, killing 241 soldiers, then hit the headquarters of the French forces, killing 58 soldiers, and the Israeli forces left Beirut and withdrew to southern Lebanon.
April 11, 1996
This date marks the launch of what became known as Operation Grapes of Wrath.
Hezbollah gained strength and began firing rockets at Israeli villages near the Lebanese border, until a series of cross-border skirmishes led then-Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres to launch a new offensive known as “Operation Grapes of Wrath,” in which the Israeli Air Force launched a massive bombing campaign against military positions and Hezbollah strongholds, as well as civilian infrastructure in southern Lebanon, Beirut, and the Bekaa.
Under international pressure, a draft ceasefire agreement was presented in Tel Aviv and Beirut on April 26, 1996. The two sides agreed to stop targeting civilians, and a “monitoring group” was established, including Israel, Lebanon, Syria, the United States and France, to ensure compliance with the terms of the agreement. This represented a “victory for Hezbollah,” which gained international recognition for the first time.
May 24, 2000
This is the date of the withdrawal of the last Israeli soldier from Lebanon.
Israeli Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak was elected in May 1999 on a promise to withdraw the Israeli army from Lebanon after losing 256 soldiers between 1985 and 2000, but Hezbollah continued its deadly ambushes and refused any negotiations, so Israel unilaterally withdrew its forces, and Hezbollah presented this departure as a victory for it.
July 12, 2006
This is the date of the beginning of the 33-day war.
Two Israeli soldiers were captured during a border patrol by Hezbollah commandos and taken to Lebanon. The Israeli forces sent to rescue them were in turn ambushed. Israel considered this an unacceptable insult and announced a major attack that would set Lebanon back 20 years.
But within 6 years, Hezbollah managed to restructure itself. The Israeli air campaign failed to stop the rocket fire. IDF soldiers who did not know the terrain well fell into traps set by Hezbollah fighters. Very heavy tanks got stuck in rivers. Hezbollah showed that technical and technological superiority is not synonymous with certain victory. The 2006 war was a historic strategic victory for Hezbollah.
February 12, 2008
This date coincides with the explosion of Imad Mughniyeh’s car.
Imad Mughniyeh was the second-in-command and mastermind of Hezbollah’s covert operations, and was killed in an attack in Damascus attributed to the Israeli Mossad, after overseeing attacks and covert operations around the world.
On the other hand, Israeli intelligence services have since hit their Lebanese adversary hard on several occasions, shooting dead the head of its military logistics and ballistics program, Hassan al-Laqqis, in December 2013 in the suburbs of Beirut.
November 3, 2023
This date coincided with a speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, in which he said that all options were open.
Hezbollah’s secretary-general’s first speech after the October 7, 2023 attack was eagerly awaited, in which he unsurprisingly renewed his support for the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), but refrained from calling for an all-out war on Israel.
The newspaper concluded that between 2006 and 2023, Hezbollah transformed from a movement that harassed Israel into an Iranian weapon of mass destruction against Israel, and became a protective shield for Iran’s nuclear and ballistic program.
