By Sara Flounders
April 20, 2026

What is clear from the recent ceasefire in Lebanon is that Hezbollah has survived, regrouped and rearmed. This is a fact on the ground despite numerous news articles and statements in the Zionist media and the U.S. corporate media claiming that Hezbollah was defeated and totally destroyed.

Hezbollah is the party and liberation organization, with massive support, that drove the Israeli occupiers out of southern Lebanon in 2000. Hezbollah has agreed to past ceasefires as it has to the present ceasefire, but based on concrete experience with decades of past brutal Zionist occupations, its leaders have always refused to surrender or disarm.

Following the temporary U.S.-Iran ceasefire of April 8, the Israeli army launched waves of attacks on Lebanon even more extensive than earlier ones. Israel used scorched earth tactics, including wiping out villages throughout southern Lebanon and bombing entire neighborhoods in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital.

Both the Israeli and the U.S. governments claimed a ceasefire in Lebanon was not part of the U.S. / Iran agreement. Iran insisted that Lebanon most certainly was included in the ceasefire agreement. The Iranian government said there would be no motion in developing agreements unless all attacks on the Axis of Resistance ceased. The Axis of Resistance consists of the Iranian state and the pro-liberation fighters in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Ansarallah in Yemen and the Palestinian liberation organizations.

The Zionist forces, with full backing of U.S. imperialism, have openly violated previous ceasefire agreements. Israel now has five army divisions occupying southern Lebanon. By mid-April 2026, more than 1.2 million people, representing roughly 20% of Lebanon’s population, were displaced due to the Israeli air strikes and ground invasion.

While the Israeli attacks caused massive damage and left thousands of civilian casualties, they failed once again to destroy Hezbollah.

Trump and Netanyahu

Just the manner in which U.S. President Donald Trump ordered an end to the massive Zionist bombing then underway in Lebanon exposed the nature of U.S.-Israeli relations. Washington treats Israel as its attack dog in West Asia to be unleashed or pulled back based on immediate U.S. interests in the region.

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu well understands that for the Zionist project to survive, it must obtain generous subsidies, weapons and investments and that this depends on maintaining U.S.imperialist domination of West Asia. If the U.S. hold on the region falters, the Zionist project will collapse. Israel has no way to exist independent of U.S. imperialism.

Trump simply declared in an April 17 Truth Social post that “Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the U.S.A. Enough is enough!!!” The Times of Israel reported that Netanyahu was “stunned and alarmed” by Trump’s statement, having learned of it from the media.

Sheik Naim Qassem, the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, who replaced Hassan Nasrallah after a massive Israeli bomb attack assassinated him Sept. 17, 2024, said, “The battlefield has proven it is the final arbiter.” Qassem thanked Iran for its support in the face of Israeli aggression and said the closure of the Strait of Hormuz forced the United States and Israel to agree to a ceasefire in Lebanon. (PressTV, April 18) 

Hezbollah – a force of resistance

The U.S.-Israeli position is that Hezbollah is an outside force that must be disarmed and rooted out. Hezbollah’s consistent demand is that Israel is the invading force that must withdraw from Lebanon.

Hezbollah is a home-grown resistance movement that emerged among the poorest, most marginalized Shi’ite Muslims of South Lebanon, who were expelled from their homes by the 18-year brutal Israeli occupation of South Lebanon that began in 1982 with the driving out of the Palestinian resistance forces. Lebanon almost ceased to exist as a country during those years.

During the Israeli occupation, U.S. and French imperialism built a huge military base at the Beirut airport. On Oct. 23, 1983, two truck bombs were detonated in the U.S. Marine Corps barracks there, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. Another truck bomb killed 58 French paratroopers.

This stunning blow forced the withdrawal of U.S. occupation forces. After 1983 the U.S. relied on the Israeli military as the occupation force in Lebanon.

But the entire Zionist military failed to defeat the steadily growing resistance movement, led by Hezbollah. By May 24, 2000, the Israeli occupation of Lebanon ended in a rushed, chaotic retreat south to the border and the collapse of the Israeli collaborators called the South Lebanon Army (SLA). Thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners were released.

The forced withdrawal of the Zionist army of occupation was the first time any land occupied by Israel was won back through armed struggle. In 2006 Hezbollah and its allies again repulsed Israel’s attempt to reinvade Lebanon.

Hezbollah led the forces that liberated southern Lebanon, fundamentally changing social relations and regional security. In 2018 Hezbollah and its allies held a majority of seats in the Lebanese Parliament. It ran Lebanon’s first non-corrupt government agencies and oversaw the building of schools, hospitals and infrastructure.

Hezbollah has overseen the building and rebuilding of housing for hundreds of thousands of Lebanese displaced by Zionist bombings. Within Lebanon’s dysfunctional state apparatus (a leftover from French colonialism), Hezbollah has existed as a state within this state for 40 years.

Hezbollah was inspired by the revolutionary fever and depth of the Iranian revolution, which electrified and mobilized millions. Like other resistance forces in the region, Hezbollah has applied asymmetric warfare strategically and with revolutionary determination and has been capable of challenging the vastly superior money, massive military equipment and international resources of the U.S. and Israel.

Hezbollah came to the aid of Syria during the decades of war to pull Syria apart. It opened a second front in the north to aid the Palestinian resistance in Gaza.

A temporary ceasefire

The Lebanese media reported 60 different towns were struck in hours leading up to the ceasefire. (Dropsite news, April 16) Defense Minister Israel Katz said the 10-day ceasefire is “temporary,” and the Israeli military “holds and will continue to hold all the areas it has cleared and captured” in Lebanon, including a 10-kilometer buffer zone. (Times of Israel, April 17)

Israel, under the 10-day ceasefire agreement, is permitted to carry out strikes in Lebanon as long as it claims they are in “self-defense.” Article 3 reads: “Israel shall preserve its right to take all necessary measures in self-defense, at any time, against planned, imminent or ongoing attacks. This shall not be impeded by the cessation of hostilities.” (Dropsite news, April 16)

Hezbollah said in an April 17 statement that it would respect the ceasefire but that its hands “will remain on the trigger, vigilant against the enemy’s treachery and betrayal.” The resistance group’s Military Media announced that between March 2 and April 16, the Islamic Resistance issued 1,828 statements detailing the execution of 2,184 distinct military operations against the Israeli enemy.

Hezbollah last agreed to a 21-day ceasefire hours before a massive bomb obliterated an entire block that martyred the revolutionary leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and an important member of the Hezbollah leadership on Sept. 27, 2024. This assassination of the leadership as they were meeting, following negotiations with the U.S., was similar to the U.S. bombing of the Iranian leadership and the martyrdom of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other top leaders in Iran.

But Hezbollah as a mass movement had roots too deep to be eliminated with the U.S.-provided bombs. It has proved capable of reorganizing and moving forward. This is also true of the Iranian state organizations. Ceasefires are temporary pauses in a continuing and determined struggle for liberation and sovereignty.