The Shiite Community in Lebanon and the Background for Hezbollah’s Emergence

Abstract

The Hezbollah movement emerged at the height of a crisis in the Lebanese political system as an expression of political and social processes within Lebanon and in the region, from the 1960s on, that paved the way for the emergence of radical elements in the Shiite community. The Islamic revolution in Iran and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon shook the Shiite community in Lebanon and sparked off a poignant internal debate. This debate raged between the followers of the pan-Islamic approach, who advocated loyalty to Khomeini’s leadership and did not recognize the validity of the Lebanese state, and the Amal movement, which perceived itself as a national-secular Lebanese movement operating within the framework of the Lebanese political system. In July 1982, Amal leader Nabih Berri decided to join the Lebanese National Salvation Front.1 A schism occurred in the movement following this step, and some of its members, including Berri’s deputy, Hussein al-Musawi, retired from it. These dissidents, in full agreement with Shiite fighters and a group of young clerics who had graduated from the religious seminaries in Najaf, founded Hezbollah in the summer of 1982 with Iranian assistance.2