HEZBOLLAH AND ISRAEL have been sworn enemies for decades.
The animosity has its roots in the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon in 1982, which effectively led to the creation of the paramilitary movement of Shia Muslims.
The killing of Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah last week was a major blow to the organisation, and the latest in a series of escalations by Israel in recent weeks.
Before mid-September of this year, the two parties had been engaged in tit-for-tat cross-border rocket exchanges since the Hamas-led Palestinian attack on Israel last October.
Last night, Israeli troops crossed the border into Lebanon and began raids on nearby villages.
If Israel goes ahead with a full-scale military incursion, it will be the third time it has invaded its northern neighbour in its 76-year existence.
To help put the current conflict in perspective, here is a brief history of the relationship between Hezbollah and Israel.
Lebanon is a country defined by cultural, ethnic and religious diversity.
For decades, it had been under the control of a Christian minority – a hangover from the French colonial era – while the Shia Muslim population in the south was largely disenfranchised. The other major community in Lebanon is the Sunni Muslim population.
In 1968, Palestinian refugees poured into Lebanon fleeing Israeli violence alongside armed militants and the leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), who began launching attacks against Israel from the south of the country.
Lebanon’s 15-year civil war erupted in 1975 when fighting broke out between the PLO – alongside other Palestinians – and the country’s Maronite Christian community.
Broadly speaking, those who supported Palestine and Arab liberation more broadly made up one side, while right-wing Christian communities formed the other.
Israel responded by invading and briefly occupying most of southern Lebanon in 1978.
In the same year, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was created by the UN Security Council and given the mission of confirming Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, restoring peace and security and assisting the Lebanese Government in restoring its effective authority.
The mandate and the force have expanded over time but the primary mission remains one of peacekeeping.
Irish troops form part of UNIFIL and are stationed along the Blue Line on the Lebanon-Israel border today.
Hezbollah, the Party of God, was born in the midst of Israel’s 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which was ostensibly aimed at killing the leadership of the PLO and stopping their cross-border raids.
Hezbollah emerged as one of a number of armed groups that fought against the occupation and ended up being the spearhead of the resistance that eventually pushed Israeli forces back across the Litani River in 1985.
Its successes against Israel bolstered its reputation as a major opponent to Western imperialism in the Arab world.
The PLO leaders would eventually leave for Tunisia in 1990 but the Israeli military presence in Lebanon continued.
Hezbollah pressed on with the fight against Israeli forces and their ally, the South Lebanon Army (SLA), a mostly Christian militia.
Hezbollah became a military and political force in Lebanon through close ties with Iran, who provided funding, weaponry and training. The established official ties in 1985 and that close relationship has persisted until the present day.
Hezbollah is a part of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance”, a constellation of armed groups in the Middle East united by their opposition to both Israel and the presence of US forces in the region.
The Axis also includes groups in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen.
In February 1992, an Israeli helicopter gunship attack killed Hezbollah’s secretary-general Sheikh Abbas al-Musawi.
Aged just 32, Hassan Nasrallah was elected as his successor.
A year later, Hezbollah, the only group that refused to give up its weapons after the civil war ended in 1990, rebuffed a large-scale Israeli incursion dubbed “Operation Accountability”.
In April 1996, Israel launched “Operation Grapes of Wrath”, which included raids aimed at crushing Hezbollah’s military capability and halting the firing of rockets into northern Israel.
A UN-brokered ceasefire brought it to an end but not before around 1,200 Lebanese and 165 Israelis had been killed.
Israel’s army withdrew from Lebanon in May 2000 after its 18-year occupation.
The pull-out from its so-called “security” zone in its neighbour’s territory was intended to end a situation that had cost it roughly 1,000 fighters.
The Israeli withdrawal was largely attributed to its newly elected prime minister, Ehud Barak, who had just been elected on the back of a promise to do so.
In 2006, Hezbollah seized two Israeli soldiers on the Israel-Lebanon border.
Hezbollah said it wanted to exchange the pair for prisoners held inside Israel, but the outcome was yet another war.
The conflict went on through July and August of that year and caused 1,200 deaths in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 in Israel, mostly military personnel.
At the end of the war, Hezbollah was still standing under the leadership of Nasrallah.
The status quo of animosity but without large-scale military conflict remained in place for years.
That all changed when a Hamas-led attack from Gaza in Palestine shocked Israel and left around 1,200 people dead, mostly civilians.
Hezbollah responded immediately by launching rocket attacks against Israel the following day, in solidarity with its allies in Gaza.
Cross-border exchanges of rocket fire followed and played out as a tit-for-tat conflict between the two parties.
Things changed again when Israel blew up pagers and other hand-held devices held by Hezbollah members – as well as members of civil society like doctors and nurses – in mid-September, killing more than 30 people and wounding thousands.
Even before that, Israel had assassinated senior Palestinian and Lebanese figures.
The Israeli escalation culminated in the killing of Nasrallah through the bombing of multiple apartment buildings at once. The death toll has yet to be confirmed as people are pulled from the rubble and others remain missing.
Throughout all of this, the US government, alongside European states, has repeatedly asserted Israel’s “right to defend itself”.
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