Ghaleb Awwali was a senior Amal Movement and later Lebanese Islamic Jihad official who was assassinated in a car bombing in Beirut, Lebanon in a Hezbollah controlled area, on 19 July 2004. Hezbollah blamed Israel and the Jund Ash Sham organization but offered no evidence, while others blamed Hezbollah itself, as Awwali had been active independently, and had been involved with Sunni Palestinian militant organizations. Ghaleb Awwali has been called a martyr of Lebanon and a martyr of Palestine. [1] Hezbollah officials have claimed that the Zionist movement is behind the attacks and have claimed that Jund Ash Sham is linked to Israel, but have offered no evidence.
Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and militant group, led since 1992 by its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament. Its armed strength is assessed to be equivalent to that of a medium-sized army.
Hassan Nasrallah is a Lebanese cleric and the secretary-general of Hezbollah, a Shia Islamist political party and militant group.
The Islamic Jihad Organization was a Lebanese Shia militia known for its activities in the 1980s during the Lebanese Civil War.
Al-Manar is a Lebanese satellite television station owned and operated by the political party Hezbollah, broadcasting from Beirut, Lebanon. The channel was launched on 4 June 1991 and it is a member of the Arab States Broadcasting Union. The station is considered one of Hezbollah's most important global propaganda tools and reaches around 50 million people.
The Cedar Revolution or the Independence Intifada was a chain of demonstrations in Lebanon triggered by the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. The popular movement was remarkable for its avoidance of violence, peaceful approach, and its total reliance on methods of civil resistance.
Jund al-Sham is or was the name of multiple Sunni Islamic jihadist militant groups.
On July 25, 1993, Israeli forces launched a week-long attack against Lebanon named Operation Accountability in Israel and the Seven-Day War in Lebanon. Israel specified three purposes to the operation, to strike directly at Hezbollah, to make it difficult for Hezbollah to use southern Lebanon as a base for striking Israel, and to displace refugees in the hopes of pressuring the Lebanese government to intervene against Hezbollah. The affected civilian population included both Lebanese and Palestinian refugees.
The Israeli–Lebanese conflict, or the South Lebanon conflict, is a series of military clashes involving Israel, Lebanon and Syria, the Palestine Liberation Organization, as well as various militias and militants acting from within Lebanon. The conflict peaked in the 1980s, during the Lebanese Civil War, and has abated since.
The 2006 Lebanon War, also called the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War and known in Lebanon as the July War and in Israel as the Second Lebanon War, was a 34-day military conflict in Lebanon, northern Israel and the Golan Heights. The principal parties were Hezbollah paramilitary forces and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The conflict started on 12 July 2006, and continued until a United Nations-brokered ceasefire went into effect in the morning on 14 August 2006, though it formally ended on 8 September 2006 when Israel lifted its naval blockade of Lebanon. Due to unprecedented Iranian military support to Hezbollah before and during the war, some consider it the first round of the Iran–Israel proxy conflict, rather than a continuation of the Arab–Israeli conflict.
Hezbollah has a Foreign Relations Unit and maintains relations with a number of foreign countries and entities. These are particularly Shia states, but also Sunni groups like those affiliated with the Palestinian cause; and the group is also suggested to have operations outside the Middle East in places such as Latin America and North Korea.
The 2000–2006 Shebaa Farms conflict was a low-level border conflict between Israel and Hezbollah for control of Shebaa Farms, a disputed territory located on the Golan Heights–Lebanon border. Fighting between the two sides primarily consisted of Hezbollah rocket and mortar attacks on Israel and Israeli artillery barrages and airstrikes on Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Clashes began a few months after the 2000 Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, which Hezbollah viewed as incomplete due to the presence of the Israel Defense Forces in Shebaa Farms. The conflict culminated in the 2006 Lebanon War; Israel retains control over the territory.
Ron Arad, was an Israeli Air Force weapon systems officer (WSO) who has officially been classified as missing in action since October 1986. Arad was lost on a mission over Lebanon and is believed to have been captured by the militant group Amal and later handed over to Hezbollah.
During the 2006 Lebanon War, allegations of war crimes were made by various groups and individuals, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and United Nations officials, who accused both Hezbollah and Israel of violating international humanitarian law. These have included allegations of intentional attacks on civilian populations or infrastructure, disproportionate or indiscriminate attacks, the use of human shields, and the use of prohibited weapons.
Samir Kuntar was a Lebanese Druze member of the Palestine Liberation Front and Hezbollah. He was convicted of terrorism and murder by an Israeli court. After his release from prison as part of the 2008 Israel–Hezbollah prisoner exchange, he received Syria's highest medal, was honored by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and was designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the US government.
The 2012 Burgas bus bombing was a terrorist attack carried out by a suicide bomber on a passenger bus transporting Israeli tourists at the Burgas Airport in Burgas, Bulgaria, on 18 July 2012. The bus was carrying 42 Israelis, mainly youths, from the airport to their hotels, after arriving on a flight from Tel Aviv. The explosion killed the Bulgarian bus driver and five Israelis and injured 32 Israelis, resulting in international condemnation of the bombing.
The 2012–2014 Quneitra Governorate clashes began in early November 2012, when the Syrian Army began engaging with rebels in several towns and villages of the Quneitra Governorate. The clashes quickly intensified and spilled into the UN-supervised neutral demilitarized zone between Syrian controlled territory and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
The Iran–Israel proxy conflict, also known as the Iran–Israel proxy war or Iran–Israel Cold War, is an ongoing proxy conflict between Iran and Israel. In the Israeli–Lebanese conflict, Iran has supported Lebanese Shia militias, most notably Hezbollah. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iran has backed Palestinian groups such as Hamas. Israel has supported Iranian rebels, such as the People's Mujahedin of Iran, conducted airstrikes against Iranian allies in Syria and assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists. In 2018 Israeli forces directly attacked Iranian forces in Syria.
The January 2015 Mazraat Amal incident was an airstrike against a two-car convoy that killed six Hezbollah fighters, including two prominent commanders, and a general of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, at al-Amal Farms in the Quneitra District of Syria, in the Eastern Golan Heights, on 18 January 2015, during the Syrian Civil War. The attack was largely attributed to Israel, which did not officially confirm that it carried it out. Hezbollah and IRGC held Israel responsible and threatened to retaliate. On 19 January 2015, Al-Nusra Front member Abu Azzam al-Idlibi claimed that Jihad Mughniyeh and the other Hezbollah fighters were killed in an Al-Nusra Front ambush at Jaroud in the Qalamoun Mountains in the Al-Qutayfah District northeast of Damascus, claiming that it "will be the end of the Persian project, God willing."