Sarah Chal­lands, CTV.ca News

Israel’s efforts to wipe out the capa­bil­i­ties of Hezbol­lah are now focus­ing on the caves and tun­nels of south­ern Lebanon’s sav­age ter­rain and just this week, Israel con­fi­dently claimed it had destroyed half of the Islamic mil­i­tant group’s arsenal.

How­ever, while Hezbol­lah con­tin­ues to launch rock­ets capa­ble of hit­ting cities deep inside Israel, some experts believe the Israeli claim is just wish­ful thinking.

With a charis­matic and pop­u­lar leader, superb mil­i­tary train­ing, mil­lions in fund­ing and sup­port from Iran and Syria, Hezbol­lah is a force that won’t go qui­etly, if at all.

Indeed, the reli­gious con­vic­tion of its guer­ril­las, their sea­soned fight­ing expe­ri­ence and the sup­port they have among Lebanon’s 1.2 mil­lion Shi­ites are addi­tional assets that could help ensure its long-term survival.

Rachad Anto­nius, a Mid­dle East spe­cial­ist at the Uni­ver­sity of Que­bec, believes Israel’s goal of wip­ing out Hezbol­lah is impos­si­ble to achieve.

“Hezbol­lah rep­re­sents a very broad range of peo­ple and it’s an impor­tant sec­tor of the soci­ety,” Anto­nius told CTV News.

“The only way to silence them would be to kill all the Lebanese in the south. Israel can­not do that.”

Hezbol­lah has repeat­edly met Israeli ground troops with heavy fire and recently suc­ceeded in wip­ing out an Israeli tank and an armoured bull­dozer with anti-tank missiles.

The mil­i­tant group is believed to have rock­ets, pos­si­bly man­u­fac­tured in Iran, with ranges of up to 45 miles and its deadly arse­nal includes land mines, anti-aircraft guns, assault rifles and night vision equipment.

Ground troops
If Israel wants to suc­ceed in push­ing the group’s rocket launch­ers back so they can no longer reach Israel, send­ing in ground troops is seen as a necessity.

But the ground offen­sive could be costly in terms of casu­al­ties and Hezbol­lah chief Sheik Has­san Nas­ral­lah has made no secret of his wish to see his guer­ril­las take on Israeli troops eyeball-to-eyeball.

Nas­ral­lah has also ridiculed Israel’s claim to have wiped out ’50 per cent’ of Hezbollah’s arsenal.

“The arse­nal that you fear is still there ... and our abil­ity to fire many, many more remains intact,” he said.

And although Israel may have suc­ceeded in dis­rupt­ing Hezbollah’s sup­ply lines by bomb­ing the main high­way to Syria and impos­ing a naval block­ade on Lebanon, Hezbol­lah has long proved adept at find­ing ways to receive and hide its weapons and funds.

Hezbollah’s fight­ers are said to be mostly drawn from the local regions of south­ern Lebanon and can eas­ily blend into the local pop­u­la­tion, rely­ing on res­i­dents for food and shelter.

“Israel’s biggest weak­ness is that it’s igno­rant of the mag­ni­tude of Hezbollah’s resources,” said Helmi Moussa in the Beirut news­pa­per As-Safir.

‘Party of God’
Described by the United States as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, Hezbol­lah, or ‘Party of God,’ is a pow­er­ful polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary move­ment which rep­re­sents Lebanon’s Shi­ite Muslims.

It was estab­lished with finan­cial back­ing from Iran in the early 1980s and was the only Lebanese polit­i­cal party to openly keep its arms at the end of the 1975–1990 civil war.

Accord­ing to U.S. intel­li­gence reports, Iran’s Islamist gov­ern­ment gives Hezbol­lah around $100 mil­lion a year and pro­vides the move­ment with sophis­ti­cated weapons sys­tems to be used by its sev­eral thou­sand well-trained soldiers.

Iran also sends advis­ers, and accord­ing to U.S. intel­li­gence, issues its march­ing orders.

Mean­while, Syria allows Hezbol­lah to train fight­ers in remote camps in Syria and ter­ri­tory under its con­trol in Lebanon.

Accord­ing to the FBI, Hezbol­lah has not played a role in any ter­ror­ist attacks within the United States.

The FBI says that its mem­bers in the U.S. are rais­ing funds for activ­i­ties over­seas and noth­ing more than that.

End­ing the Israeli occu­pa­tion
Hezbollah’s mil­i­tary arm, the Islamic Resis­tance, was a main force in dri­ving Israeli troops from south­ern Lebanon after a 22-year occupation.

Dur­ing the occu­pa­tion, Hezbol­lah adopted the tac­tic of tak­ing West­ern hostages, but their most effec­tive weapons were the remote-controlled road­side bombs that were det­o­nated when Israeli patrols passed by.

In 1983, mil­i­tants who went on to join Hezbol­lah ranks car­ried out a sui­cide bomb­ing attack that killed 241 U.S. marines in Beirut.

Israel, faced with mount­ing casu­al­ties after hav­ing already lost 900 sol­diers in the con­flict, with­drew in 2000, a deci­sion that Hezbol­lah and many in Lebanon saw as a major Arab victory.

The group’s suc­cess won it the sup­port of many Lebanese, wide­spread admi­ra­tion for Hezbol­lah chief Nas­ral­lah, and a sub­se­quent pres­ence in the Lebanese parliament.

Ter­ror­ism expert Eric Mar­go­lis described Nas­ral­lah as a “remark­able character.”

Appear­ing on CTV News, Mar­go­lis said while Nas­ral­lah was seen as “the great Satan” to the West and Israel, he was “the great hero” of the Arab world.

“He was the only Arab to defeat the Israelis mil­i­tar­ily and he fought them out of south­ern Lebanon after years of bloody com­bat,” he said.

“He is the most pop­u­lar Lebanese politi­cian and with this lat­est chal­lenge to Israel, he is now quickly becom­ing the most looked at and prob­a­bly the most pop­u­lar Arab politician.”

Hezbol­lah even has its own tele­vi­sion sta­tion, Al Manar, which reaches a world­wide audi­ence by satel­lite. The move­ment also runs a net­work of schools and hos­pi­tals through­out Lebanon.

Refusal to dis­arm
Despite a 2004 UN res­o­lu­tion order­ing Hezbol­lah to dis­arm, the group is still believed to have any­where between 5,000 to 20,000 mili­ti­a­men under arms in Lebanon.

Last year, Hezbol­lah chief Nas­ral­lah boasted his move­ment had more than 12,000 rock­ets, includ­ing Katyushas, which could reach north­ern Israel.

The move­ment has vowed to keep fight­ing as long as Israel remains in the She­baa Farms area, a tiny dis­puted bor­der enclave on the bor­der between Lebanon, Israel and Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Lebanon says She­baa Farms is Lebanese land occu­pied by Israel, but Israel, backed by the United Nations, insists the farms are on the Syr­ian side of the bor­der and there­fore form part of the Golan Heights, which Israel has occu­pied since 1967.

Syria agreed to with­draw its 14,000 troops from the coun­try after the UN Secu­rity Coun­cil 2004 res­o­lu­tion, which demanded all for­eign forces leave Lebanon.

The with­drawal of Syr­ian troops and the wide­spread anti-Syrian protests in the wake of the 2005 assas­si­na­tion of Lebanese ex-Prime Min­is­ter Rafik Hariri changed the bal­ance of power.

The assas­si­na­tion, which was blamed on Syria, saw Hezbol­lah become the most pow­er­ful mil­i­tary force in Lebanon.

And while Hezbol­lah cap­i­tal­ized on its polit­i­cal gains, it con­tin­ued to describe itself as a force of resis­tance against Israel, not only for Lebanon, but for the entire region.

The move­ment has called for the destruc­tion of Israel, describ­ing its occu­pa­tion of Pales­tine as ‘occu­pied Mus­lim land’ and argu­ing the state has no right to exist.

Hezbol­lah has also fre­quently protested the con­tin­ued deten­tion of pris­on­ers from Lebanon in Israeli jails.

It shows sup­port not only for the Pales­tini­ans, but also for the Islamist mil­i­tant group Hamas, while pre­sent­ing itself as
a cham­pion of the anti-Israeli struggle.

Hezbollah’s crit­ics accuse it of reck­less­ness and of pur­su­ing a Syr­ian and Iran­ian, rather than a Lebanese, agenda.

Mean­while, Dam­as­cus and Tehran, nei­ther of whom want to be drawn directly into this fierce con­flict, are anx­iously attempt­ing to deflect pres­sure from the Bush admin­is­tra­tion in Washington.