The British government’s position on Israel’s operations in Lebanon has become incoherent. In March, Britain twice joined statements saying that Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel must cease, the group must disarm, and that responsibility for the situation lay with Hezbollah. Yet on April 9, Yvette Cooper called Israel’s latest strikes “deeply damaging” and insisted that Lebanon be folded into wider ceasefire diplomacy. If Hezbollah bears responsibility, Israel cannot then be treated as the principal problem for trying to dismantle the force that opened this front.
Israel did not start the northern war. Hezbollah did. It opened fire on October 8, 2023, one day after Hamas’s massacre, forcing the evacuation of around 60,000 Israelis from border towns and villages. This came after years during which Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia founded in 1982 and built around violent opposition to Israel, amassed a vast rocket and missile arsenal. Pre-war estimates ranged from 120,000 to 200,000 rockets and missiles. Calling Israel the aggressor turns cause and effect upside down.
Our government also treats Lebanon as a normal sovereign actor capable of controlling events on its own territory. Lebanon’s sovereignty is hollow; Hezbollah has long functioned as a state within a state. Hezbollah is militarily stronger than the Lebanese Armed Forces, Hezbollah fighters are better paid and better armed. The LAF, hollowed out by Lebanon’s financial collapse, has needed foreign salary support while Hezbollah is operating on a $50 million monthly budget, mostly from Iranian money laundered through Turkey and the UAE. No serious observer could call that a state monopoly on force. Lebanon lives under a zombie militia-state, subsidised by Tehran, which decides questions of war and peace.
UK-funded LAF base overlooking Israeli positions[Missing Credit]
That same unreality has governed the West’s treatment of UNIFIL. Resolution 1701 was supposed to leave the area between the Blue Line and the Litani free of armed personnel and weapons other than those of Lebanon’s government and UNIFIL, yet UNIFIL’s own guidance says peacekeepers report only violations of 1701. They do not operate under rules of engagement that allow them to enforce 1701 in any meaningful sense. The result is the strategic farce Israel has lived with for nearly two decades: an international mission that watches as Hezbollah entrenches, stores weapons, builds underground infrastructure and prepares for the next round.
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