Why Hezbollah endures

By Maria Calculli, Leiden University

The most recent Israeli war of aggression against Lebanon, launched to destroy Hezbollah—and still ongoing despite a ceasefire in November 2024—is part of a routine. It represents the latest escalation in a continuous war that Israel and its Western allies have waged—using political, economic, legal and military means—to destroy the resistance that Hezbollah’s political and military activities pose to internal and external actors seeking to subdue Lebanon. The scale of the multifront war to ‘demilitarize and disband’ Hezbollah is remarkable, given the extreme asymmetry of power involved. But what is more striking is Hezbollah’s endurance in the face of constant war by powerful enemies seeking its complete destruction. This is the puzzle that my article ‘Mimetic hedging: Hezbollah’s resistance against all odds’ tries to resolve, by proposing a new theory of resistance, called ‘mimetic hedging’, which might help explain the possibility of resistance of other actors like Hezbollah.

Hezbollah’s power – which, I argue, has grown through the constant attacks aimed at its destruction – has long intrigued scholars, who have offered two main explanations. One view emphasizes the secrecy of its covert operations as key to its resistance; the other sees its power as deriving from its ‘normalization’ – its integration within Lebanese state institutions. Building on and moving beyond these accounts, I argue that Hezbollah has prudently defended the political idea of ‘resistance’, whilst deflecting US and Israeli attempts at its destruction through a careful symbiosis of its operation within and without the Lebanese state. This is the strategy I call ‘mimetic hedging’.

Mimetic hedging captures Hezbollah’s deep awareness of, and response to, the weaponization of international law and institutions—such the UN Security Council—by its rivals. These have sought to conjure up a new form of Lebanese suzerainty that recognizes US and Israeli imperialism, leaving no room for Hezbollah’s existence. Hezbollah has responded by turning the tables—partaking in the same weaponization of norms to neutralize the effects of lawfare waged by the US and Israel. It has done so by championing the sovereign equality and territorial integrity of Lebanon, becoming at times even the sole defender of these norms against their routine transgression by US-backed Israeli forces, who justify their aggression in the name of fighting Hezbollah as a ‘terrorist’. Hezbollah has appropriated these norms despite its political project of ‘resistance’ ultimately transcends the asphyxiating borders of the nation-state, especially in a region under the yoke of US and Western imperialism.

However, the latest and ongoing US-backed Israeli aggression against Lebanon, which has resulted in 2,720 civilian casualties and unprecedented destruction of civilian infrastructure, signals a major change in US policy toward Lebanon—and yet another step in its deliberate destruction of the international legal order. In their attempt to inflict a fatal blow on Hezbollah, the US-backed Israeli forces have recurred to terrorist tactics: booby-trapped pagers and walkie talkies detonated in civilian places, assassinations, and systematic bombing of densely populated zones. These methods, while recalling Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon, have now escalated dramatically in scope and intensity.

After decades of waging lawfare against Hezbollah to bolster Israeli interest in the Middle East, the United States have now de facto exited the international legal order in favour of a fog of lawlessness to subjugate Lebanon, and other states in the region, through might and diktats. If the ongoing US-Israeli war of aggression manages to eradicate Hezbollah, it will not be due to the successful mobilization of international law and institutions, but rather their wholesale decay.

Author biography: Maria Calculli m.calculli@hum.leidenuniv.nl