Hezbollah

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Hezbollah [Arab., = Party of God], Lebanese Shiite political party and militia. Founded in 1982 with Iranian help to oppose Israeli forces occupying S Lebanon, Hezbollah launched guerrilla attacks and suicide bombings against Israeli forces (which were a factor in Israel's withdrawal in 2000), and mounted terror attacks on other targets inside and outside Lebanon, include the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. With strong support among religious, comparatively poor Shiites in S Lebanon the Biqa (Bekaa) valley, and Beirut's southern suburbs, and underwritten financially by Iran and individual Shiites, Hezbollah established a Shiite social-services network, including schools, hospitals, and clinics, and emerged as a major Lebanese political force; it has been led since 1992 by Hassan Nasrallah, a charismatic Shiite cleric. Supported militarily by Iran and Syria, Hezbollah's fighters used the years after Israel's withdrawal to retrain and rearm, acquiring large numbers of missiles and sophisticated equipment.

Politically part of the pro-Syrian camp in Lebanon, the party nonetheless became part of the largely anti-Syrian government established in 2005, and resisted the government's and the United Nations' call that it disarm. In 2006 a cross-border Hezbollah attack on Israeli soldiers, in which two Israelis were captured, sparked warfare (July-August) between Hezbollah militia and Israeli forces in which Hezbollah launched hundreds of missiles at Israel (many at civilian targets) and maintained a stubborn resistance against the Israeli forces that invaded S Lebanon. Hezbollah emerged from the fighting, which it regarded as a victory, determined to claim a larger political voice in the Lebanese government.

Hezbollah (‘party of allah’) A radical Islamic fundamentalist party and guerrilla organization. It emerged in response to Israel's occupation of Lebanon (1982–4), and was primarily committed to the expulsion of the Israeli military from southern Lebanon. For this purpose, it committed regular attacks on military targets, as well as civilian targets in northern Israel. Ultimately, it was pledged to the destruction of the state of Israel, and the erection of a theocratic Islamic Palestinian state. In response to the Gaza-Jericho agreement of 1993, it joined a radical Arab alliance to fight the subsequent Middle Eastern peace process, which it managed to put at serious risk in 1996, when its attacks on northern Israel triggered heavy Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah an extremist Shiite Muslim group which has close links with Iran, created after the Iranian revolution of 1979 and active especially in Lebanon. The name comes from Arabic ḥizbullāh ‘Party of God’.

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