lLebanon fell into open war in just a few weeks. After a year of low-intensity conflict on the country’s northern border, Israel began its offensive on September 17 and 18, detonating thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies in Beirut. In the process, the Israeli army intensified its airstrikes. On September 27, a few days before the start of a ground operation in southern Lebanon, soldiers of the Jewish State fired around a hundred missiles against the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, eliminating Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah since 1992.
In the world, The term “Hezbollah” appears even before the founding of the Lebanese political-religious structure. : in 1979, in the context of the Kurdish rebellion against the Islamic revolution in Iran, “falangists”, supporters of the mullahs’ regime, adopt the war cry “Hezb Illa Hezbollah” (“no party outside the Party of God”), says Jean Gueyras on August 20.
On November 9, 1983, a year after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the creation of the organization of the same name, the newspaper mentioned this for the first time. “Party of God” while tensions multiply in the southern suburbs of Beirut, between the different movements of the Shiite branch of Islam. Lucien George describes it as “frankly Khomeinist”, in reference to Imam Khomeini, religious leader of Iran.
During the 1980s, in the midst of the civil war in Lebanon, Hezbollah was considered a political group supported by armed militants, members of the “Shiite Nebula.” Its program is then structured around three proposals: “expel colonialism from Lebanon, establish (…) an Iranian-style Islamic republic » and expel Israel from southern Lebanon. Hezbollah does not recognize the existence of the Jewish State.
He was accused, in the 1980s, of several deadly attacks, including the 1983 attack on the Drakkar building in Beirut, which cost the lives of 58 French paratroopers, and the Paris attacks of 1985 and 1986. That year, Edwy Plenel suggests that The “Jihad” group – which takes responsibility for some of these attacks – could be the “armed arm” of “fundamentalist party [et] pro-Iranian”, Hezbollah, and talk about it.“terrorist actions”.
Party at the service of armed struggle
Over the years, those who the special envoy of World Françoise Chipaux describes it as “fundamentalists” They are only gaining ground and influence in Lebanon. In 1988, she tells how these activists, “Kalashnikov in hand”, also serve the interests of neighboring Syria, whose troops will be present in Lebanon until 2005. Until the 1990s, many inhabitants of southern Lebanon continued to consider Hezbollah, “return with force, with means capable of seducing”, like militiamen threatening their safety. “Hezbollah, however, is not successful and, in the conscience of a powerless population abandoned to its fate, its rejection is as strong as that of Israel,” wrote on November 22, 1991.
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