On Friday, an Israeli airstrike hit Hezbollah's headquarters, killing Hezbollah's leader Hasan Nasrallah. Since the its inception during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-90) in 1982 as a Shiite militia, Hezbollah has been in conflict with Israel, first clashing against Israeli forces when they entered Lebanon during the civil war. In 1983, Hezbollah would be behind the bombings of US embassy and US and French barracks leading to their eventual designation as a terrorist organization.
Since then Hezbollah has grown to be a powerful force in Lebanon, becoming a major political party. Yet they've continued to orchestrate terrorist attacks on Israel and the West as well as becoming a major Iranian ally. As the Israel and Palestinian conflict heated up during 2023, Hezbollah has once again come into conflict with Israel, firing explosives across the Israel border in support of its ally and fellow-Iranian proxy Hamas.
However Israel has not taken these attacks lying down, seizing the opportunity to finally try and destroy one of its most hated rivals. Notably earlier this month, Israel launched a pager attack on Hezbollah, creating a front company to sell pagers to Hezbollah that were remotely detonated, injuring and killing many Hezbollah members but also indiscriminately injuring and killing many civilians. Continuing its initiative, following the attack Israel has launched many more strikes into Lebanon. Countries such as the United States have called for a cease fire to end the fighting, however on Friday, the prime-minister of Israel, Netanyahu would deliver an address to the UN, further doubling down on his goals of attacking Hezbollah and rejecting the ceasefire proposals. Shortly after his address the news of Israel successful strike on Hezbollah's leader would come out.
So what does Nasrallah's death mean. First off its the end of any potential cease fire. Both parties in the conflict are too far gone and have spilled too much blood to reach any agreement. Second of all it has weakened Hezbollah. As a founding member and leader of the organization for over 30 years, Nasrallah has been an important component of Hezbollah. With his death and the chaos of the previous Israeli pager attack, Hezbollah has been thrown into chaos which may seem like a good thing for Israel, but as America's invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan showed, it could mean the rise of even more extremist organization. Third the people of Lebanon are once again thrown into devastating conflict. While Israeli airstrikes have been successful in killing member of Hezbollah, it has come at the immense cost of many innocent Lebanese. Finally stateside it once again complicates the upcoming presidential election. Already an extremely controversial subject within the United States, the continued escalation of the Israeli-Hamas conflict into Lebanon has further complicated the United States' support of Israel. With no end in sight for the conflict in the Israeli Hezbollah war, this is just another entry in the long book of Middle Eastern conflicts that have come to claim the lives of many innocent people.
Sources:
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-hezbollah
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-planted-explosives-hezbollahs-taiwan-made-pagers-say-sources-2024-09-18/
https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-israel-hezbollah-airstrikes-28-september-2024-c4751957433ff944c4eb06027885a973
https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-israel-hezbollah-airstrikes-suburb-617575d9c5d7c711bc02e7b81d2ba4ad
2 comments:
This article raises many questions for me. How is Hezbollah going to respond? Though taking out their leader may have been a justified move, they are such a large group that I feel they will manage to quickly get things under control again, but now with an extreme desire for revenge. With how devastating modern weapons can be, taking out their leader was EXTREMELY risky. Who really knows if Hezbollah has access to nuclear or chemical weapons? One can never predict what they might do in retaliation.
Additionally, how is the UN going to try and keep things under control? It seems like at this point there is basically nothing they can do, so as awful as it is, the best move may just be to just let the groups continue fighting and avoid getting any other nations involved.
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