Israel and Hezbollah have been trading fire for months now. Tuesday’s strike in Beirut will further stir international fears of a wider regional war.
An Israeli airstrike targeting a top commander of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah rocked a neighborhood in Beirut on Tuesday.
Israel says it carried out the “targeted strike” in response to a rocket attack that killed 12 young people in the Israeli-controlled Golan heights on the weekend. Hezbollah has denied responsibility for that attack.
Israel and Hezbollah have been trading fire for months now, most of which has been concentrated in Israel’s north and Lebanon’s south. Tuesday’s attack in the Lebanese capital has stoked fears of a wider regional war.
We unpack a brief history of Hezbollah, its origins and goals, and who its elusive leader is.Born in a civil war
Lebanon’s complex and fragile democracy distributes power along religious sectarian lines. The number of seats given to any particular sect is proportional to its percentage of the population – the largest groups being Christians, Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims.
In 1975, boiling tensions between the sects, along with an influx of predominantly Sunni Palestinian refugees, plunged the country into a 15-year-long civil war. Amid the fighting, Israeli forces twice invaded and occupied the south of Lebanon in order to combat Palestinian guerilla groups that had been launching attacks against Israel.
With the support of Iran (the region’s preeminent Shiite power), Hezbollah, which began as a small Shiite militia group during the war, emerged as the dominant force fighting against the Israeli occupation. In their efforts to expel the Israelis, the group became known for its use of extreme tactics, such as the infamous 1983 suicide bombing attack targeting U.S. and French housing barracks in Beirut, which killed some 300. The group is sometimes credited with launching the modern suicide bombing era.
In 1985, Hezbollah – which means the « Party of God » in Arabic – released a manifesto, in which it pledged allegiance to Iran’s supreme leader, and called for the destruction of Israel.
