A Critical Review of Hezbollah’s Political and Military Experience
By Asaad Abu Khalil, Al-Akhbar Newspaper
The War of Support
The discussion over Hezbollah’s options and its military and political practices after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood will not end anytime soon. It will serve as material for research and dissertations for many years to come. Today, we do not yet know the profound impact that the Flood will have—both in the medium and long term—on the course of the Palestinian cause worldwide.
Hezbollah found itself in deep trouble the moment news of the Flood reached its leadership. It is not enough to say that the party knew Hamas was preparing something in Gaza, or that Hamas had told them earlier to brace for an event beyond the foresight of even the most seasoned observers.
That was all Hezbollah knew about the Flood before it took place. George W. Bush [without drawing a comparison, of course] had also been aware of the possibility of 9/11, after receiving specific intelligence just weeks before the attacks. Such intelligence is often described—in other languages—as “information that cannot be translated into action”, or intelligence that may or may not lend itself to concrete operational measures.
Hezbollah did not possess any useful information that could help it plan a response to “Israel’s” retaliation against the Flood. Sinwar neither asked for support, nor sought coordination, nor even gratitude from Hezbollah or the rest of his allies. He left it up to them to decide what to do in their own way—a burden that is both heavy and damaging for the entire Axis. Sinwar either failed to study the surrounding political environment—regional and global—at the time he launched the Flood, or he studied it and concluded that nothing justified delaying or halting the operation.
Any Hamas leader in Gaza could have drawn lessons from the July War: that the enemy has shifted its military doctrine and is willing to sacrifice its captives—and those around them—even if it results in multiple, scattered massacres. After the abduction of soldiers in July 2006, the enemy’s army bombed several sites it believed were holding them. These brutal doctrines serve one overarching goal: to subjugate the Arabs and instill despair and helplessness in their psyche. Gulf media has supported this effort since before 1967.
The party was almost besieged [especially internally] on the eve of the Flood [as I have explained in detail earlier]. The domestic political situation was not favorable to it at all. Its allies had scattered and abandoned it—either in protest against its policies and conduct toward them, or out of desire for hostile Gulf money. Hezbollah itself worsened its own crisis through its choices: its relentless defense of the corrupt regime and its entire apparatus, and its participation in suppressing the protest movement that erupted spontaneously in 2019 after the financial collapse—before the enemy, or enemies, seized it and redirected it against the party. “Target the Party First” became the true and actual slogan of the “movement” [or revolution]. What, in the face of all this, could the party have done?
The Option of Ignoring the War
[Sayyed] Nasrallah could have chosen to ignore the war altogether. He could have relied on the fact that Sinwar acted unilaterally in order to refuse dragging Hezbollah—and Lebanon along with it—into the conflict. Would this have won him the support of his rivals in Lebanon and the region? Certainly not. We know them well, and we know their Gulf-“Israeli” agenda. We know them through the various phases of their political careers.
When Lebanon had yet to reach an agreement with “Israel” over maritime borders, these same voices [amplified by Gulf media] erupted in outrage and accused Hezbollah of blocking a deal that would secure wealth and benefits for Lebanon—simply because, according to their usual simplistic analysis, it was bound by an Iranian agenda. In their narrative, no agreement between Lebanon and “Israel” could be allowed because it would harm the nuclear file. You can connect the nuclear file to almost any event or development in Lebanon. Fares Said, for example, makes a living off Gulf funding by repeating this same narrative: that Hezbollah does this or doesn’t do that because the Iranian nuclear file prevents it—or encourages it.
On the contrary, had Hezbollah ignored the developments of the Flood on the grounds that it was caught off guard, the Gulf–“Israel” chorus in Lebanon [echoing on Mohammed bin Salman’s Al-Hadath channel] would have lashed out at the party, accusing it of selling out Palestine in order to protect Iran’s interests in the nuclear negotiations with the United States. They would have rushed to rally Arab public opinion against the Shiite stance, claiming that when the time came to support Palestine, Hezbollah fell asleep and abandoned the battlefield because its agenda did not include Palestine. According to reports in various media outlets and in private discussions, Iran advised Hezbollah to exercise restraint and limit itself to verbal support in its own style. Iran was never inclined to enter into a devastating regional war—especially since it may have read Trump’s policies better than Sinwar did.
And had Hezbollah ignored the Flood and issued statements of support from afar, it would not have received any praise from its domestic rivals. Even after it launched a very limited response—striking the Shebaa Farms and shelling intelligence installations near the border—it was mocked by hostile media, which accused it of weakness and submission toward “Israel”. Talk of an “under-the-table agreement” accompanied the party’s initial response to the Flood. Those same adversaries had already insisted, after the maritime border agreement, that Hezbollah had pledged from that moment until the end of time never to harm “Israel”, and that Iran would guarantee its distance from the battlefield. They asserted that Hezbollah had signed a peace-and-surrender deal worse than the May 17 Agreement.
In the Arab world, public opinion had already been primed to repeat the claim that Iran exploits the Palestinian cause for its own benefit [how exactly for its benefit? None of them ever provide a convincing answer—especially since Iran’s support for the cause has brought it nothing but calamities, sanctions, and wars from both the West and the Gulf states]. Arab public opinion would have said that the Shiites do not care about the cause, and that the Sunnis alone [where exactly?] are its true bearers and defenders.
But in Lebanon, the party might have been able to catch its breath somewhat had it ignored the “Flood.” It could have turned its full attention to domestic concerns, though it was already deeply mired in the details and turmoil of internal politics, imposing a blockade on the presidential elections because it insisted on a single Maronite candidate. It even refused to negotiate with its former ally, the Free Patriotic Movement, to agree on another acceptable option [what harm would there have been if it had settled on Marwan Charbel or Fares Boueiz, or others who had proven their steadfastness and loyalty without asking for anything in return?]. No—the party, together with its ally Berri, blocked the holding of any presidential election session in order to impose Sleiman Frangieh as the sole candidate.
This episode will not be recorded among the party’s achievements or clever maneuvers. It ended up backing the candidate of its regional rivals in the Gulf and the United States. Joseph Aoun was imposed on it because the military confrontation had stripped Hezbollah of the influence that once gave it room for maneuver or bargaining. It found itself politically very weak and mistakenly hoped that Aoun would reward it for its supportive—or at least non-oppositional—stance.
For [Sayyed] Hassan Nasrallah, ignoring the “Flood” was never an option. Palestine has always been at the core of the doctrine of Khomeini’s disciples. Quds Day has become an almost religious ritual tied to the holy month of fasting. Had [Sayyed] Nasrallah abandoned Palestine in its suffering in Gaza, he would have betrayed himself and his principles first and foremost—and that was impossible. [Sayyed] Nasrallah taught loyalty to the Palestinian cause to more than one generation, and he used to deliver public, almost academic-style lectures about the grave danger of Zionism—both to Lebanon and to the Arab and Islamic worlds. For [Sayyed] Nasrallah and [Sayyed] Abbas Al-Moussawi, Palestine is a foundational principle of doctrine that cannot be abandoned.
These people operate in politics, bargaining over quotas and appointments just like others in Lebanon’s sectarian and corrupt system—but Palestine is not a commodity on their negotiating table. They are the last people who could ever accept the existence of “Israel”, and they cannot accept it. The enemy killed [Sayyed] Nasrallah and his comrades because they stood with Palestine. They shed their blood for Palestine, yet received no recognition or gratitude from the Palestinian people in Lebanon. Not a single demonstration erupted from any Palestinian camp in honor of [Sayyed] Nasrallah, and the participation of the camps in his funeral was very minimal, according to what I learned from those who were present.
[Sayyed] Nasrallah has made Palestine the central axis of his policies and their starting point. Even the intervention in Syria was viewed through the lens of confronting movements tied to the Zionist project [here, developments in Syria confirmed that [Sayyed] Nasrallah’s warnings were justified, despite the sectarian and religious slogans that accompanied the intervention, which were not solely related to Palestine]. [Sayyed] Nasrallah’s era of leadership in the party is, first and foremost, the era of Palestine. His options would have been limited had he decided to ignore it, even if such a decision might have preserved the organization’s leadership. Meanwhile, “Israel” had already revealed an even more brutal and horrific face than before—a state founded on savagery, crimes against Arabs, and ethnic cleansing.
Would ignoring the Flood have saved the organization? Here we enter an assessment of the party’s situation based on what happened afterward: the enemy was ready to strike Hezbollah at the first opportunity, and Netanyahu wanted to launch the war on Lebanon immediately, but the US administration requested a delay. Had communications been disrupted simultaneously with a surprise war, this would have placed the organization in an extremely vulnerable and precarious position—far worse than the situation Hezbollah found itself in when the war later expanded by “Israel’s” decision.
The option of ignoring the Flood cannot be analyzed without considering what followed. The unleashing of an “Israeli” war of extermination and starvation was so horrific that it was impossible for the party, and for [Sayyed] Nasrallah personally, to ignore it. But is it fair that Hezbollah alone among all of Hamas’s allies bore the heaviest burden in participating, without waiting for aid or coordination from the others? Where was the Iraqi Popular Mobilization [Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi]?
What weakened Hezbollah’s response was the new trajectory of the Syrian Baathist regime, which continued its rapprochement with the UAE government. [It is not enough to say that Bashar Al-Assad did not sign any agreement, because in the final stage of his alignment, he was allied with the Arab regime closest to “Israel”, and he began restricting Hezbollah and Iran’s activities in Syria in coordination with the UAE].
Iran also had its own calculations that kept it from responding directly to the “Israeli” aggression, while Hezbollah remained very loyal to its allies. [Sayyed] Nasrallah’s word carried weight because, unlike the leaders of other parties and organizations in Lebanon, he keeps his promises.
