The Global Bluff: How Hezbollah Became a Military Power Under the Guise of an Agreement
An international agreement is one alternative to an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, but Israel has already been in that position. Shomrim shows exactly how Nasrallah trampled over United Nations Resolution 1701, with thousands of violations which became more frequent from year to year.
Just like in Gaza, a terrorist organization got close to the border, procured weapons and grew in strength – right under the eyes of the State of Israel
Miki Levy
Design: Noam Tamari | Photos: Reuters | Maps: Google
There is a tendency to think of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah as one in which the “rules of the game” are either adhered to or violated. But a review conducted by Shomrim – going all the way back to the end of the Second Lebanon War in August 2006 – reveals that, in this case, there never were any such rules. Instead, there was a process of gradual and then increasingly frequent breaches from the time that the cease-fire agreement (United Nations Resolution 1701) was reached, right up to the current time. According to the data presented below, Hezbollah began violating the agreement shortly after the war ended; within a decade, the number of violations had mushroomed by 800 percent and by the end of 2017, Hezbollah had committed around 13,000 violations of the agreement. It is important to note that, from the UN’s perspective, Israel also violated Resolution 1701 by conducting aerial sorties to gather intelligence about Hezbollah’s activities.
Between 2017 and the outbreak of Operation Swords of Iron in Gaza, Hezbollah began violating the agreement in a much more blatant manner. In the year leading up to October 7, Hezbollah launched drones at Israeli targets, increased its visible presence in areas under Israeli sovereignty, and, according to Israeli security sources, attempted attacks inside Israel. As the map below shows, Hezbollah is currently firing missiles at Israel from areas populated by Lebanese army personnel and UNIFIL forces—the very entities tasked with enforcing the ban on Hezbollah or any other armed group's presence in southern Lebanon.
This is the result of 18 years of massive armament, provocation, and aggression, culminating on October 8 when Hezbollah joined forces with Hamas. This escalation now threatens to turn into a full-scale regional war.
Even Nasrallah knows: The UN is toothless
According to UN Resolution 1701, the Lebanese army and UNIFIL were supposed to ensure that Hezbollah did not establish any kind of presence close to the border with Israel. This did not happen
A decade of violations and lawlessness
An 800 percent increase in violations of the cease-fire between 2007 and 2017
2006
Cautious optimism
At the end of the Second Lebanon War, the United Nations passed Resolution 1701, which stipulated, among other things, that terrorist organizations in Lebanon would be disarmed and that there would be no Hezbollah presence in southern Lebanon, close to the border with Israel. In order to enforce the resolution, some 10,000 soldiers from the Lebanese army and around 12,000 UNIFIL soldiers were deployed.
2007
An addictive quiet
A report published by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC) some six months after Resolution 1701 was passed determined that the quiet in southern Lebanon “is to a great extent a function of Hezbollah’s focus on rehabilitating its military strength.” Terrorist organizations “were not disarmed [and] no serious attempt was made by the Lebanese government to deal with them.”
Political weakness
After gaining strength in the Lebanese parliament for a decade or so, Hezbollah’s representatives tried to topple the government of Fouad Siniora. According to the ITIC report, “the Lebanese government is struggling to survive and avoids challenging Hezbollah’s status in south Lebanon, and the Lebanese army has even had to move troops from the south to Beirut to deal with the internal crisis.”
2008
Mughniyeh assassinated
Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s chief of staff and an arch-terrorist who was wanted by the FBI and Interpol, was killed in a car bomb in the Syrian capital, Damascus. There has still been no official claim of responsibility for the assassination.
2009
First proof
Just two years after Resolution 1701 was passed, an explosion at an arms depot in the southern Lebanese village of Khirbet Silim was – from an Israeli perspective – proof that Hezbollah was violating the UN resolution by stockpiling arms and ammunition south of the Litani River. Just a few days later, the UN Security Council confirmed that this was, indeed, a violation.
2015
The war between the wars
Over the years, Hezbollah’s efforts to increase its military strength were frustrated by aerial attacks that were ascribed to Israel. In one of these airstrikes, six Hezbollah members and officers from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed. Shortly thereafter, Hezbollah launched an ambush, firing an antitank missile at an Israeli convoy. Two IDF soldiers were killed and seven injured.
2016
No longer a guerilla organization
According to a later report by the ITIC, during the winter of 2016 “Hezbollah held an exceptionally large military display, the first of its kind” in Syria, in recognition of the organization’s contribution to defending the regime of Bashar al-Assad during the Syrian civil war. Among the military hardware on display were armored personnel carriers, self-propelled artillery and Hezbollah’s Special Forces.
2017
Israel warns
During a military swearing-in ceremony for officers from the Galilee Formation, then GOC Northern Command Maj.-Gen. Yoel Strick warned against repeated violations of Resolution 1701 by Hezbollah and the IDF spokesman published videos showing operatives from the organization in civilian clothes patrolling close to the border with Israel and collecting intelligence.
2018
The tunnel threat
As part of Operation Northern Shield, the IDF located an offensive terror tunnel crossing under the border fence between Israel and Lebanon and emerging some 40 meters inside Israeli territory. According to the IDF spokesman, the tunnel was built from a privately owned home in a nearby village over a period of two years. Unlike Hamas’ tunnels in Gaza, the Hezbollah tunnel was “built using a long and complex process of excavating bedrock.”
2019
UNIFIL threatened
According to a paper by the Institute for National Security Studies, a UNIFIL report stated that “Hezbollah activists in civilian clothes use force to prevent UN troops’ free movement, with roadblocks, harassment, threats, and theft of electronic equipment. They also,” the report added, “resort to violence – sometimes lethal – against UNIFIL forces.”
2022
Drone attacks
While Israel and Lebanon were negotiating the details of a maritime economic agreement, Hezbollah launched three drones in the direction of the Karish oil rig, which is close to the northern border and in Israel’s territorial waters. All three were intercepted by the IDF and, according to the report, the IDF does not believe that they were armed.
2023
Deep inside Israeli territory
In March 2023, a terrorist from Lebanon infiltrated into Israeli territory and detonated an explosive device at Megiddo Junction. One Israeli was seriously wounded in the blast and, according to security officials, the device was “similar to a model used by Hezbollah.”
Shortly thereafter, Hezbollah operatives set up two tents on the Israeli side of Mount Dov – in other words, inside sovereign Israeli territory. Despite Israel’s diplomatic efforts, it took two months for Hezbollah to remove the tents.
In September 2023, just a few weeks before the October 7 massacre, there was an assassination attempt in Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park. It was recently revealed that the target was former IDF chief of staff and defense minister Moshe Ya’alon and that the people behind the operation were from Hezbollah.
In summary
At the end of the Second Lebanon War, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah admitted that, had he known that the attack on July 12, 2006, in which eight Israeli soldiers were killed and Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were kidnapped and subsequently murdered, would lead to an all-out war, he would not have authorized that operation. Since then – and even now, during intense fighting between the IDF and Hezbollah – Nasrallah is portrayed as someone who weighs each step with extreme caution, bases his decision on the interests of his Iranian overlords and who is trying to stretch the rope as taut as possible without snapping it. In light of the figures and events described in this article, it might be possible to suggest a slight tweak to that anomaly: Hezbollah did not stretch the rope; it unraveled it, thread by thread, in its dealings with Israel, with the international community and with the Lebanese people, all of whom stood by unable to act.
The IDF’s operations in Lebanon over the past few days show that Israel is no longer willing to contain the war of attrition that Hezbollah imposed on it on the northern front. At the same time, given that there will be no utopian “total victory” once this war has ended, the question that still needs answers is what a political agreement would look like and whether, this time, Israel will take operative steps to implement it, assuming that it cannot count on the international community or the United Nations to be vigilant on its behalf.
Sources (analysis by Shomrim)
