Israel–Hezbollah: Maronite View

Israel is fighting an intense war in the north against Hezbollah. The group violated the ceasefire on 2 March,  leading to Israeli strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut and the elimination of its rocket commander. Israeli troops have engaged heavily in southern Lebanon. To understand Israel’s war with Hezbollah, you must understand the centuries-old conflicts in this region and the diverse communities in Lebanon.

I am an Aramaic Maronite Christian. Luckily I am an Israeli citizen. I enjoy the freedom of the Jewish Israeli democracy since I was born in the Galilee, Israel and not on the Lebanese side of the border, where Hezbollah oppresses our Aramaic Maronite Christian nation.

“To understand Israel’s war with Hezbollah, you must understand the centuries-old conflicts in this region and the diverse communities in Lebanon”

In Israel, there are 10,000 Maronites, while in Lebanon there are about 900,000, and worldwide about 10 million Maronites who migrated after surviving genocides and massacres in the recent past, such as the 1860 and 1914 genocides.

The Maronites are an Aramaic-Phoenician Christian people who have lived in Lebanon for thousands of years. They founded Lebanon as an autonomous entity in the 7th century, which lasted until the beginning of the 14th century. During the last two centuries of that era, they allied with the Crusaders, which were defeated by the Mamluks in 1308; later, the Ottomans took over the Maronite lands. In the 16th century, the Maronites reestablished connections with Rome, France, and the West, followed by a unique alliance with the Druze in the 17th century. The Maronites demanded and established the modern country of Lebanon after WWI as a Christian refugee homeland for persecuted Christians in Lebanon and the Levant.

The Druze are a distinct monotheistic religious group in the Levant whose faith emerged in the 11th century from Islam, incorporating elements of Gnosticism and Neoplatonism. Persecuted by the Islamic majority, they hid in the mountainous areas of Southern Syria and Lebanon. During the 17th-century, they played a foundational role alongside the Maronites in the formation of the Mount Lebanon entity. Although this robust Maronite-Druze dualism characterised by shared trade and autonomous governance was disturbed by sectarian conflicts in 1860, it remains a defining historical pillar of the modern Lebanese state.

Lebanon’s sovereignty has been hijacked by forces that brought insecurity and instability to Lebanese Christians, starting a cycle of recurring wars from the first day of Great Lebanon’s creation. The first massacre was executed by Shia Muslims in South Lebanon against a Christian village named Ein Ebel in May 1920, because the Shia refused to be part of the new Lebanese country and resisted the French Mandate. This was followed by many other attacks by Shia Muslims against Christian Lebanon.

“Lebanon’s sovereignty has been hijacked by forces that brought insecurity and instability to Lebanese Christians”

The Shia are the second-largest Muslim group worldwide after the Sunnis. The Shia presence in Lebanon goes back to the Abbasid Caliphate era, when Arab, Kurdish, and Turkmen tribes were brought to settle in lands taken from Christians in South Lebanon, the Beqaa Valley, Metn, Keserwan, Akkar, and Tripoli. This surrounded the last free Christian entity in the Levant as a strategy to choke it and sever its connection to the world. Historically, the Shia settled in areas bordering Christian populations; today, we still see a large presence in the Beqaa and the South, with ongoing attempts to infiltrate Christian areas.

Israel and Its Northern Neighbour
Relations between Jews and Maronites go back to the middle of the 19th century. When Maronites intervened to stop a blood libel in Damascus in 1840, Jews likewise intervened to stop massacres against Maronites in Mount Lebanon in 1860. The relationship continued to flourish through the Patriarchate, the Alliance Israélite Universelle, and the Zionist movement. In the period 1937-1948, the Maronite Patriarch supported the establishment of the Jewish homeland in Palestine.

These peace efforts were undermined by Arab Muslim groups, Palestinian terror groups like the PLO, and their leftist allies, supported by Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. They launched violent demonstrations, sparked civil wars, and carried out terrorist attacks on Israel from the southern border. This forced Lebanon into continuous internal strife and led to external wars with Israel to secure northern Israeli villages.

The Northern Front Today
Nowadays, the northern front is the front line for the free world against the Iranian ‘Axis of Evil’, led by Hezbollah. This Shia militia strengthened after the civil war and took control of Lebanon after the Syrian withdrawal in 2005. Hezbollah has not only attacked Israel but also the Lebanese people, assassinating Prime Minister Hariri and other politicians and officers, and attacking Druze and Christian neighbourhoods and towns.

Israeli villages in the north, Christian and Jewish alike, are under constant threat from Iranian and Hezbollah missiles. Lebanon has turned into a ruin serving the Ayatollahs, where Christians live under a ‘Dhimmitude’ system and existential threat. Hezbollah uses civilians as human shields and has turned Christian villages in the south into weapon depots and launching sites, just as Hamas does in Gaza.

“The IDF must ensure no terror infrastructure exists that threatens Israeli security”

The Solution
The time for ‘containment’ is over. Israel must ensure absolute security. We cannot tolerate an Iranian presence a stone’s throw from our homes. Hezbollah must be demilitarised across all of Lebanon. No more ‘paper agreements’ like Resolution 1701. The IDF must ensure no terror infrastructure exists that threatens Israeli security.