In a speech during Sunday Mass on August 8, 2021, the Maronite patriarch of Lebanon, Bechara Boutros Al-Rahi, called on the Lebanese army to prevent the launching of missiles against Israel from Lebanese territory and said U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 of August 11, 2006, must be strictly implemented.
Lebanon is currently a country in political, economic, social turmoil. Rahi stressed that it was unacceptable that a party decides peace and war outside the decision of legality. He was calling on the army to confront Hezb'allah. It is true, he said, that Lebanon has not signed a peace with Israel, but it is also true that Lebanon has not declared war with it and is officially committed to the 1949 truce. The dilemma is that Hezb'allah is the strongest military and political force in Lebanon. Its supporters refuted the patriarch's comments, calling him "the patron of surrender." It had defied Rahi by escalating hostilities against the state of Israel.
Rahi was referring to the incidents on August 6, 2021, when 19 rockets were fired from southern Lebanon into northern Israel after three rockets had been launched against Israel two days earlier. The Israeli Iron Dome had intercepted ten of the rockets, while six had fallen in open areas and three inside Lebanon. It was the sixth attack on Israel in recent months and the first in which Hezb'allah admitted responsibility. The IDF responded by firing 40 artillery shells at open areas in southern Lebanon, and then by airstrikes targeting the Hezb'allah launch site and the road on which the terrorists had traveled.
The Hezb'allah attack is a warning sign of possibly more deadly military problems in the future.
Hezb'allah, like Israel, has significantly increased and upgraded its military capabilities.
With the help of Iran, it has more than 150,000 rockets and missiles, and many can reach any place in Israel, including ballistic missiles with a range of 700 kilometers. Hezb'allah's action violates U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Founded in 1982 by Muslim clerics and Iran, the objective of Hezb'allah was to fight American and Israeli imperialism and the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. A second objective was to gather all Muslims into an ummah, linked by the doctrinal and religious connection of Islam. It then added a militant political movement with an effective political party, an extensive social service network, a TV station, and a budget that comes from Iran.
Hezb'allah personnel were trained and organized by a force of 1,500 Iran revolutionary guards.
The Hezb'allah militia has about 10,000 active fighters and 20,000 reserves, and a larger arsenal of artillery than most nations possess. On August 12, 2021, the Alma Center in Israel reported that Hezb'allah had built an extensive network of tunnels, whose cumulative length of hundreds of kilometers connects entire regions of the country.
Some tunnels are able to allow pick-up trucks with rocket launchers to fire, leave, and re-emerge at a different location. One tunnel stretches 45 kilometers south of Beirut. The tunnel project results from cooperation between North Korea and Iran, which paid for the project, and Hezb'allah.
Hezb'allah, the world's most heavily armed non-state actor, is a ruthless body.
Yet the main enemy is Israel, starting in 1978 when Israel occupied Southern Lebanon and invaded Beirut in 1982. Elimination of the State of Israel is its primary goal. Using tactics of suicide bombing, assassination, capturing Israeli soldiers, murders, and hijacking, it has attacked Jewish and Israeli targets abroad.
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