Why Hezbollah believes it has not lost this war

The images of residents of the suburbs of Beirut, the South and the Bekaa on the roads a few moments after the ceasefire began to take effect at dawn on Thursday are, for Hezbollah, the most great victory. The attachment that its popular environment has for it, despite all the pressures and losses to which it has been subject, constitutes a blatant failure for the Israelis and for their plan to reduce as much as possible the influence and weight of Hezbollah, in addition to its military crushing.

But Lebanon remains divided on the assessment of the war. Some consider this a blatant defeat for Hezbollah, and even for Lebanon, due to the scale of the destruction. Especially since the agreement speaks of the withdrawal of Hezbollah fighters from the area south of the Litani and the dismantling of its entire military, social and economic infrastructure. On the other hand, those close to Hezbollah believe that it was a victory on points, despite the heavy losses and the terrible price that was paid.

Hezbollah, for its part, wants to be rather discreet on this issue, even if its well-known figures, notably the deputies, seek to be present on the ground, alongside the people and listening to their problems. For the moment, Hezbollah is therefore avoiding assessments and evaluation of what happened, even if in its restricted circles, discussions on these delicate subjects continue without interruption. In the opinion of executives, the toll of a war is not based on material and human losses. It is based on what has been achieved against the objectives set by the belligerents. It is from this reasoning that Hezbollah believes that it has not lost the war… without going so far as to speak, as some of its close friends do, of victory.

Hezbollah begins by recalling what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared when launching the ground offensive. He then spoke of invading the region south of the Litani to eradicate Hezbollah. He even spoke at one point of his determination to reshape the Middle East from Lebanon through radical change. Finally, he had repeatedly insisted on his desire not to stop this war before having achieved total victory and having forcibly brought the Israelis of the North home – these would number between 70,000 and 100,000.

However, at the time of the announcement of the agreement, none of these objectives had been achieved according to Hezbollah. The 70,000 Israeli soldiers engaged in the ground offensive failed to establish a permanent position in the neighboring communities. They certainly made incursions, destroyed entire villages, took photos and videos, but they were not able to really occupy the symbolic localities of Khiam and Bint Jbeil, let alone the Lebanese territory from the border to at Litani. Likewise, the Israelis who intensively and violently bombed several Lebanese regions, destroying entire villages in the Bekaa and hitting legal and clandestine posts on the Lebanese-Syrian border, have not succeeded in clearly blocking this border and the vagueness remains. about what is happening there and about the transport of weapons and ammunition through these crossing points to Hezbollah. This is also the case for Hezbollah infrastructures that the Israelis claim to have destroyed in the Bekaa and in the southern suburbs of Beirut through violent bombings. In this regard, Netanyahu declared that his army destroyed 80% of the party’s military capabilities, but the latter launched missiles and drones daily towards Israel for more than 60 days. Even on the penultimate day before the ceasefire, he launched 350.

For Hezbollah, the agreement reached following negotiations with Speaker of the House Nabih Berry is based on the text of resolution 1701, without an additional comma. In other words, after an offensive lasting more than 60 days, Israel did not obtain more than this text, which remains balanced in the eyes of the Lebanese. American presidential envoy Amos Hochstein himself declared in one of the interviews he recently gave, Lebanon and Israel retain the right to defend themselves if they feel attacked, and he denied any deployment to the south. from Lebanon by American soldiers or others outside the United Nations Interim Force.

Furthermore, the agreement does not really talk about the disarmament of Hezbollah. In other words, there is no open question of putting an end to Hezbollah, but just of moving it away from the area south of the Litani, which means its weakening. At the same time, the Israelis must also withdraw completely from the South, otherwise maintaining their presence in any form could justify the return of “the resistance”… Regarding the side agreement concluded between Tel Aviv and Washington and recognized by the Americans themselves, Hezbollah considers that if the Israelis had been victorious and if they had obtained everything they wanted in the official agreement, they would not have needed to conclude another with the Americans. Some Lebanese say that this agreement was concluded in parallel to preserve Lebanon’s face and its concern for sovereignty, but Hezbollah does not believe this version and thinks that if the Israelis had been able to impose their conditions, they would not have hesitated to do so. Moreover, for Hezbollah, the Israelis this time asked the Americans to push for a ceasefire because, as Netanyahu himself said, their army is tired and they have a manpower problem. .

Based on this approach, Hezbollah believes it has not lost the war. He just resisted and stood his ground and defeated the Israeli plans. But he admits to having received very hard blows… He was also taken by surprise by the Israeli offensive when he thought he would be content with a “support front”. But he’s still there.