Shortly after the fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) forces, a militant offshoot of al-Qaeda, the Israeli regime began what they dubbed Operation Arrow of Bashan. As the Biblical title suggested, the operation aimed at the occupation of southern Syria. 

Simultaneously, alongside the ground invasion, Israeli warplanes launched a series of airstrikes across Syria, targeting Syrian Arab Army weapons storage facilities.

Some pro-HTS voices lauded the Israeli airstrikes as a blow against the now toppled Assad regime, but the reality was that the Israeli Army was actively stripping Syria’s future of any means of deterrence against any hostilities.

This is what the Western powers wanted from Syria this whole time: the main goal behind their regime change project since the beginning of the war on Syria began in 2011 was for Syria to become a shell of a state that lacks any means of defense, thus allowing "Israel", the US, Turkey, and whichever other Western and Gulf country to enter, take whatever resources it pleased, and leave without questioning.

The project with Syria succeeded. The new self-appointed president, Ahmad al-Sharaa (FKA Abu Mohammad al-Jolani), is now en route to normalizing with "Israel", and, in return, he will be given sanctions relief and a facelift from terrorist to hero.

But despite al-Sharaa’s cozying up to Tel Aviv, IOF jets still violate Syria's airspace, and consequently its sovereignty, and strike government targets without any fear of potential blowback.

Syria’s lack of defensive weapons proves how crucial these capabilities were, especially when put against "Israel". These arms allow a nation to keep its sovereignty and not become the punching bag of its surrounding area.

After Syria, the disarmament issue has been hanging over the heads of Lebanon’s Hezbollah following their successful resistance against Israeli occupation forces.

"Israel", the West, and various Western-backed parties within Lebanon are attempting to facilitate the same outcome as Syria as a means toward normalization between the Zionist entity and Beirut. Even as they insistently debate the subject of Hezbollah’s arms, "Israel" continues to encroach on Lebanese sovereignty by carrying out airstrikes against Lebanese civilians, invading the airspace to spy on people’s movements, and demolishing homes on the border, all while the government, who's calling for the resistance to disarm, lies to itself about the posibility of stopping these attacks vis-à-vis US-brokered negotiations.

Lebanon’s past with disarmament: PLO as a case study

Lebanon bore the brunt of the disarmament of a major anti-"Israel" armed force before, by way of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1982. 

The lead-up to this event came as a result of "Israel’s" second invasion of Lebanon, the first one occurring in 1978, under the pretext of eliminating PLO forces who were launching attacks against the northern occupied territories from South Lebanon. 

"Israel’s" invasion saw it reach and encircle Lebanon’s capital city of Beirut, leading to a looming crisis for both Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. 

Indirect US-led negotiations were set to try to push PLO militants out of Lebanon in exchange for the alleged de-escalation of violence and protection of civilians. One of the demands made to the PLO was for the group to give up its arms. 

The Palestinian group put their faith in Saudi Arabian influence on Washington to try and avert PLO head Yasser Arafat's decision on disarmament, but Arafat eventually agreed to a ceasefire in late August, which would see the PLO, as per UN resolution 517, move armed forces out of Beirut.

Shortly after Arafat agreed to the deal, on September 14, Phalangist commander and Lebanese president-elect Bashir Gemayel was killed by an explosion during a party meeting in Beirut’s Achrafieh neighborhood.

Although the operation against Gemayel was believed to be committed by the SSNP's Habib Shartouni, the far-right Phalangist party, with the Israeli blessing and oversight, used this event to carry out the brutal Sabra and Shatila massacre, which saw the killing of at least 1,500 unarmed Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. This massacre could have been averted, so long as there was a means of defense for the camps.

Other revolutionary and nationalist groups carried out operations against "Israel" following the PLO's departure. Of them, a young Hezbollah. 

The PLO would leave Beirut and set up headquarters in Tunisia. Other revolutionary and nationalist groups carried out operations against "Israel" during the Siege of Beirut in attempts to push them out of Lebanon's capital, of them, a young Hezbollah. 

Since its very first operations, Hezbollah has proved itself to be a more daunting force than others when facing the Israeli occupiers. The operations consisted of actions that would give them an edge physically and psychologically against enemy forces. 

One of the first operations was the Tyre headquarters bombing of November 11, 1982, wherein young Ahmad Qasir stormed the Israeli headquarters in the South Lebanon city of Tyre with a car bomb, killing at least 70 Israeli soldiers. 

Hezbollah’s martyred Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah praised Qasir for his bravery and pivotal operation in a speech in 2022, calling his operation one that crushed the Israeli dream of occupying Lebanon and kickstarted the path to liberation. 

"Qasir's operation shocked the enemy and led to the collapse of all Israeli aspirations and dreams of bringing Lebanon into the Israeli age," Sayyed Nasrallah said. 

The Lebanese Resistance proved itself over the years as a formidable force through its use of asymmetric warfare against Israeli and collaborationist forces like the South Lebanon Army (SLA). 

Hezbollah’s determination and arsenal enabled them to repel the invading forces to the border, after which local fighters in South Lebanon launched coordinated ground operations, clearing bases and expelling Israeli forces and their collaborators. 

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"Israel" left Lebanese territory in one night on May 24, 2000, to the surprise of its collaborators. Eyewitnesses say that when resistance fighters entered the abandoned SLA posts, they found fully prepared meals left untouched by the fleeing SLA conspirators who had suddenly learned of "Israel’s" withdrawal. This event marked Hezbollah’s first significant victory against "Israel".

Trust in the enemy  

The fundamental flaw in this whole situation is that the Lebanese people and the Lebanese state are asked to put their absolute trust in their regional and constitutional enemy, particularly as this enemy is stating its intent to expand in the region. 

Hezbollah and other Resistance leaders in Lebanon and West Asia, as well as rabbis and various political thinkers, have mentioned time and again that “Israel” is a political expansionist project more than it is a Jewish settlement. 

So, what is being demanded of Lebanon is to rely on venom not to spread.  

Another way of judging what may come from modern political climates is to historicize the events at hand. We can relate Hezbollah to that of Algeria’s National Liberation Front (FLN), which was the main Resistance movement against French colonial rule, which began ruling the North African nation in 1834.

In 1954, the armed wing of the group, the Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN), launched a guerrilla war against the French settlers who benefited from French boots stepping on Algerian necks.  

Every nationalist group ended up joining the FLN under one name, making it Algeria's sole anti-French colonialism party. They further solidified their support among Algeria's population by not reasoning with the French colonists. Frantz Fanon writes in his Wretched of the Earth, “The [FLN] in a famous leaflet, stated that colonialism only loosens its hold when the knife is at its throat, no Algerian really found these terms too violent. The leaflet only expressed what every Algerian felt at heart: colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties.” 

Algeria’s popular resistance knew that pulling the weed from its root is more effective than trimming it, leaving it to grow every time. Fighting the occupiers is what leads to their removal, not negotiations with an entity that sees itself as more righteous than the native population.  

Disarmament was expected to be carried out first and foremost before any form of diplomatic attempts between the French authorities and Algeria's Popular Front. As two witnesses to the Evian Accords described, the then-president of France, Charles de Gaulle, wanted the Algerians to lay down their arms before any negotiations.

In his Paix des Braves (peace of the brave) proposal on September 16, 1959, de Gaulle requested that the Algerian resistance “honorably surrender” and disarm, and in an attempt to cover the foreign bad mouthing of the Algerian fighters, the French general said that the FLN fought courageously, hoping that the "hatred will fade away."  

"Those who opened fire should stop and return, without humiliation, to their families and their work!” De Gaulle said.

In brief, the French told the FLN that they should capitulate and take the decapitating blow without trial, with de Gaulle claiming that "the destiny of Algeria is in Algeria itself, when the democratic path is open.” But the Algerian resistance persevered and, despite promises of peace by French colonists, continued to fight and liberated their land from the grip of imperialist Europe.

For the case of Hezbollah, following the group’s rise in the early 80s and solidifying its position as a staple anti-Israeli force in Lebanon, the first calls for disarmament came domestically from opposing parties during the Taif accords in 1989-1990. The group was able to keep its arms by being labeled as a definitive resistance group rather than a militia.

Throughout its presence, the Lebanese Islamic Resistance group continued to show that it was a force against Western imperialism trying to encroach on the region’s, and especially Lebanon’s, sovereignty. 

Following the Israeli withdrawal in 2000 under Hezbollah fire, Western forces like the United States and France began demanding that the Lebanese Resistance disarm, saying that now that "Israel" is gone, there’s no reason for them to have weapons. "Israel" also declared that Hezbollah should disarm by enforcing the 1978 UN Security Council resolution 425, which called for an interim force to be deployed in South Lebanon. Though "Israel" largely withdrew from South Lebanon in 2000, it continued to occupy Lebanese soil and recurrently violated Lebanon's sovereignty through ground incursions into Lebanon or by violating the country's airspace.

Hezbollah has repeatedly faced calls to disarm, notably after "Israel’s" second defeat in the July 2006 war, and on multiple occasions since via reiterations of UN resolutions 1559 and 1701.

Like the FLN, Hezbollah was offered peace via the United States’ version of what an "honourable surrender" entails by way of bribery. 

Martyred Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said during a speech on March 3, 2006, four months before the beginning of the July war. “...After the year 2000, enticement also failed. We were approached with an offer that our name would be removed from the terrorism list, that the doors of power in Lebanon would be opened to us because they had been closed, that the doors of the world would be opened to us because those were also shut, and that the rest of our occupied land in the Shebaa Farms would be returned to us. And the American, at that time, who sent this initiative did not even ask for confirmation of the Lebanese identity of the Shebaa Farms from the Lebanese government, nor from the United Nations, nor did he ask for a written document from Syria. Along with this, there would be a withdrawal from the Shebaa Farms, the release of the Lebanese prisoners and detainees, and the payment of a large sum of money. All this generosity was in exchange for abandoning the resistance and laying down our weapons.”

Years later, on March 30, 2020, in a more detailed account, Sayyed Nasrallah described how “after the events of September 11, I mentioned before in detail that a representative came from America, carrying American citizenship and of Lebanese origin [...] He was sent personally by Dick Cheney, who at that time was Vice President of the United States. He came and visited me, presenting himself as a Lebanese journalist, but it turned out that he was an American carrying a message from Dick Cheney.”

“He informed me at that time,” Sayyed Hassan continued, "we are ready for you to enter the government and into power, and we will give you billions of dollars to rebuild the South and the Bekaa and to compensate, and we will remove your name from the terrorism lists, release your prisoners, and so on.”

Hezbollah’s martyred secretary general stated that the deals were contingent on working with the US in security and intelligence and abandoning the resistance against “Israel".

This section of Sayyed Hassan’s speech concluded with him naming the US envoy who met with him. “Why am I saying the name? To strengthen the credibility of this account, because these days, in the scandals happening in America and the investigations, this name has come up in the media, and he is playing a role between Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, the Americans, and Trump. This person is the Lebanese-origin, American-citizen journalist who lives in America, George Nader.”

Had Hezbollah chosen to put its trust in the Americans, not only would the deaths of all those killed by "Israel" in the south and Beqaa have gone in vain, but the will of the only resistance force to defeat the expansionist project would have also been extinguished.

The Lebanese Resistance, through its will, connection to the land, and goal-oriented focus, is doing as the FLN did and is standing firm in its fight against the Israeli goal.

Hezbollah’s fight as a resistance movement against "Israel" and its Western backers continues; ergo, Hezbollah’s position as protector of Lebanon’s land continues. It liberated it twice from Zionist imperialism and from falling victim to the ISIS wave during the war on Syria, all through the power of arms that continue to keep Lebanon from turning into a puppet state like several others in the region, whose sovereignty goes only as far as "Israel" and America allow them. 

Sayyed Ali Khamenei described the situation best when he stated that the relationship of Lebanon and Hezbollah is like that of Esmeralda and her dagger; everyone wants her, but her weapon is what keeps evil hands off of her.