Following the 2000 liberation, Hizballah and Israel maintained a delicate balance of force. However, this period was marked by continued border violations, the vast majority of which, according to the UN, were carried out by Israel. Hizballah’s strategy during these years shifted to low- level conflict and targeted operations aimed at securing the release of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners, including a successful exchange in 2004. In July 2006, a Hizballah operation killed three Israeli soldiers, wounded two, and captured two others, with the goal of negotiating another prisoner exchange. This operation occurred in the context of escalating Israeli violence in Gaza: one month earlier, Israel had assassinated Jamal Abu Samhadana, founder of the Popular Resistance Committees, and launched a broader assault on the territory. Israel used Hizballah’s operation as a pretext to initiate a full scale war on Lebanon. The war lasted 33 days. Israel launched an extensive military campaign targeting not only Hizballah’s leadership and infrastructure, but also its broader social base, together with widespread attacks against civilian infrastructure and to pressure the Lebanese government. Later investigations revealed that Israel’s military had been preparing for a large scale war against Lebanon months before Hizballah’s operation, with the objective THE 2006 WAR
of defeating the organisation. Over the course of the war, Israel killed around 1,200 people and thousands more were wounded. Approximately half a million people were displaced, and Israel inflicted an estimated $3 billion in infrastructural damage on the country. Entire villages in southern Lebanon were flattened, while roads, bridges, runways, power plants, sewage treatment facilities, ports, gas stations, cell phone towers, factories and wheat silos were destroyed across the country. Dahiya Doctrine The war also saw the implementation of the infamous “Dahiya Doctrine”, the deliberate and systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure as military strategy. Named after the Beirut
suburb of Dahiya, where entire neighbourhoods were flattened during the 2006 war, the doctrine aimed to destroy the social base of resistance, punish support for resistance, and turn populations against resistance movements.
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