What is Hezbollah and what are its goals?
The core of the Hezbollah organization (also spelled Hizballah, Hezbullah and other variants, meaning ‘Party of God’) in Lebanon comes from ‘Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ sent to Lebanon in 1982, at the time of Israel’s invasion of Southern Lebanaon designed to oust the PLO. They went to assist in the establishment of a revolutionary Islamic movement whose members would participate in the ‘Jihad’, Holy War, against Israel from bases in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Inspired by the success of the Iranian Revolution and establishment of an Islamic Republic in Iran, Hezbollah also dreamt of transforming Lebanon’s multi-religion state into an Iranian-style Islamic state. Its ideology, as expressed in declarations by its leadership, maintained that Israel had no legitimacy as a state, and that it must be fought until Jerusalem, meaning all of Israel, is liberated. Following the IDF withdrawal from Lebanon in 1985 the Hezbollah organization consolidated itself by establishing storage depots for we
