As Threat of Hezbollah War Rises, Here’s What You Should Know About Israeli-Lebanese Relations

Mourners carry a coffin during the funeral of Wissam Tawil, a commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces who according to Lebanese security sources was killed during an Israeli strike on south Lebanon, in Khirbet Selm, Lebanon, Jan. 9, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Aziz Taher

Israel’s relations with Lebanon have historically  been less hostile than with some of its other neighbors — despite having no formal diplomatic ties.  Today, however, the Israeli-Lebanese border is an extremely dangerous place, with widespread concerns about a major war breaking out in the near future.

So, how did we get here?

Israel’s War of Independence began in 1947 as a civil war between Palestinian Arabs, supported by irregular Arab forces from across the region, and Jews. After David Ben-Gurion declared the Jewish state on May 14, 1948, the armies of five neighboring states, including Lebanon, attacked Israel. The pretext was to  “protect Palestine” — but they had their own agendas, which was to destroy Israel and grab as much land as they could.

After the war, Israel reached an armistice agreement with Lebanon on March 23, 1949. Israel’s armistice agreements with Arab states were not final peace treaties, because Arab leaders still refused to accept the Jewish State’s existence.

For decades, Israel heard little from Lebanon, the only neighbor that did not attack Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War.  One reason Lebanon was the least antagonistic was its significant Christian population, which made the Lebanese leadership less susceptible to the anti-Israel hostility in other parts of the region.

The 1970s were a terrible era for Lebanon, for a myriad of reasons. The country effectively lost its independence and became dominated by Syria, a Soviet client state. Making matters worse, Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) settled in Lebanon after being expelled from Jordan.

The PLO wreaked havoc in various ways, including targeting Israeli communities near the border with rocket fire and other attacks. This provoked the devastating 1982 Lebanon War between Israel and the PLO, which was fought on Lebanese territory.

While the IDF was successful in compelling Arafat and the PLO to leave Lebanon for Tunisia, a new force filled the vacuum in southern Lebanon: Hezbollah, a terrorist group and proxy of Iran’s extremist regime.

Hezbollah wasted no time creating terror locally and internationally. On October 23, 1983, just a year after the conclusion of Israel’s war with the PLO, a Hezbollah suicide bombing at an American Marine barracks in Beirut murdered 241 American service members. The attack is just one of several  devastating suicide bombings that have been carried out by Hezbollah.

Hezbollah’s suicide bombing murdered 85 people at a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires on July 18, 1994. That Argentina has never successfully prosecuted anyone for the crime is indicative of the depth of Hezbollah’s penetration in South America.

As the culmination of meetings beginning with the Declaration of Principles in September 1993 and the Oslo Accords, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PLO Chairman Yassir Arafat met at the Camp David Summit in July 2000, to negotiate an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Arafat ultimately rejected a proposed two-state solution that would have established an independent Palestinian state in all of Gaza and almost all of the West Bank — a decision President Clinton called a “colossal historical blunder.”

Two months earlier, the IDF withdrew from southern Lebanon, after spending nearly two decades keeping terrorist threats away from Israel’s northern border. Some analysts believe Israel’s unilateral disengagement played a role in stiffening Arafat’s resolve to reject a final peace agreement. Wait long enough, his thinking went, and the Israelis will simply abandon territory. The upside of Israel’s withdrawal was that withdrawal fulfilled UN Security Council Resolution 425.

The next major flashpoint in Israeli-Lebanese relations was in 2006, when Hezbollah kidnapped and killed three Israeli soldiers while simultaneously launching rockets into Israeli communities as a diversion. This aggression sparked a 34-day conflict between Hezbollah and Israel that was also fought in Lebanon, and constituted the most recent major escalation in the area, until October 7.

Lebanon hasn’t been a fully independent state since the 1970s due to Syrian and Iranian (Hezbollah) interference. In their effort to destroy Israel, outside forces largely destroyed Lebanon.

To this day, more than 60,000 Israelis are internally displaced from their homes in the north due to over countless thousands of rocket, missile, and drone attacks in northern Israel, the vast majority of which were fired by Hezbollah, since October 7.

This is the picture that the American public should familiarize itself with as all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah looms.

The lack of historical context, media bias, and disinformation on social media has created mass confusion during this escalation, just as it has during the October 7th war. With a 24/7 news cycle bringing content without context, understanding this history is necessary to properly understand what Israel is up against in the region.