On Wednesday, reports and alerts flooded into Israel warning that drones, rockets and even gliders carrying fighters were entering the country from across its northern border with Lebanon. Much of Lebanon’s southern border with Israel is controlled by the militant group Hezbollah, which has been exchanging sporadic fire with Israeli forces since Hamas’s devastating attack from Gaza last Saturday.
The warnings proved premature, but officials and analysts in Israel and outside the country are concerned that Israel may soon face a two-front war–something Israel has not contended with since the Yom Kippur War, 50 years ago, when it fought invading armies from both Egypt and Syria. Hezbollah’s entrance into the conflict alongside Hamas would also raise the specter of an even wider regional war, potentially involving militants operating from Syria and Lebanon as well as their main backer, Iran, something U.S. leaders have been desperately hoping to avoid.
If Hezbollah enters the fight beyond the occasional rocket, Israel will be facing an old foe: the two have fought sporadically for four decades now, including a full-fledged war in 2006. But analysts believe today’s Hezbollah–like Hamas–is more powerful and sophisticated than ever.
History of violence
Hezbollah, which means Party of God, has been led for three decades by the cleric Hassan Nasrallah and is estimated to have around 20,000 active personnel in its ranks. It is blacklisted as a terrorist organization by the U.S., but in truth, Hezbollah operates like a combination of terrorist organization, army, religious movement, political party, NGO, and transnational criminal organization all rolled into one.
The group originated in southern Lebanon in the early 1980s. Israel had invaded Lebanon in 1979, and then again in 1982, to drive the Palestine Liberation Organization out of the country. Groups of local Shiite Muslims in Southern Lebanon, with backing from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, took up arms against the Israeli occupation.
Hezbollah became known internationally for a series of dramatic terrorist attacks, including bombings of the U.S. embassy and Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983, the bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina in 1994, and the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
But its main target has always been Israel, even after Israeli troops withdrew from Southern Lebanon in 2000. In 2006, Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers, a kidnapping which sparked a month-long war with Israel, in which the Israel Defense Forces once again entered Southern Lebanon and Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets at Israel. More than 1,000 Lebanese and more than 100 Israelis were killed in the conflict, which ended in a stalemate, though Hezbollah proclaimed victory.
Hezbollah has also been heavily involved in the war in Syria that broke out in 2011. Bashar al-Assad’s regime was always an ally of the group, facilitating the shipment of weapons from Iran to Lebanon. When Assad's rule was threatened by a nationwide uprising, Hezbollah sent fighters to help.
Charles Lister, director of the Countering Terrorism and Extremism Program at the Middle East Institute, says the experience in Syria was transformative for Hezbollah, giving it access to far more advanced weaponry — including precision-guided munitions — and battlefield experience that included fighting alongside Russian special forces.
“To put it bluntly, [after Syria] they're just far more professional, their military equipment is far more sophisticated, and they’re far more capable of challenging nation-state adversaries,” Lister told The Messenger.
Beyond the battlefield
As for those non-military sides of the organization, perhaps the most important involves politics.
Hezbollah’s political wing is a key player in Lebanese politics; the party and its allies control 58 seats in parliament and the group is a member of the coalition government. Hezbollah has de facto control of parts of Beirut and southern Lebanon and operates a network of schools and medical centers, as well as an influential media operation. It’s also allegedly involved in international drug smuggling to fund its activities, including the increasingly lucrative trade in the stimulant Captagon. Not surprisingly, given its reputation for religious piety, its leaders deny any involvement with drugs.
Hezbollah is often described as an Iranian proxy. But while the group undoubtedly receives funding, arms and support from Iran and works to advance Tehran’s interests across the Middle East, it is also believed to operate with a fair amount of autonomy.
A new conflict
Hezbollah has a number of similarities with Hamas. Both are Iranian-backed groups dedicated to fighting Israel. Both are hybrid political/military movements that control territory — Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon — in addition to launching attacks.
There are also key differences, principally involving religion: Hamas is a Sunni Muslim group, while Hezbollah is Shiite. The leaders of the two organizations were at odds over the Syrian civil war, when Hezbollah backed Assad’s regime, and Hamas joined other Sunni militant groups in supporting the rebels.
But in recent years, these differences seem to have been patched up. During the last flare-up of fighting in Gaza, in 2021, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards reportedly set up a joint operations center in Beirut.
After the Hamas attack on Israel on Saturday, Nasrallah praised the operation as “a message to the Arab and Islamic world” against “normalization with this enemy.” But the group also seemed to be treating the situation with caution, responding with only sporadic rocket fire after three of its members were killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Lister said that in the early days, both Hezbollah and Israel have been “treading a very fine balance and testing each other’s red lines” and that “it’s been an open secret for a long time that Hezbollah is hesitant to see a repeat of 2006.”
Now, however, the cycle of strikes and retaliation appears to be escalating quickly and could lead to an all-out conflict. Lebanon may also not be the only country involved. Since the war, Hezbollah has had a significant military presence in Syria–which has been the target of frequent Israeli airstrikes over the past few years. On Tuesday, mortars were fired from Syria at the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, and the IDF carried out artillery strikes on Syria in response.
These are all signs that an already bloody war is growing more complex–and may soon spread beyond the borders of Israel and Gaza.