How October 7 changed Lebanon and Hezbollah’s political reality

Analysts say Hezbollah’s decision on October 8 to join a ‘support war’ for Gaza changed Lebanon’s political reality.

Beirut, Lebanon – A day after the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel and the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Hezbollah made the decision to join the war, in what it said was support of the Palestinian people. It is a decision that analysts say has forever shaped Lebanese politics.

“Hezbollah got sucked into a vortex which culminated in the decapitation of their leadership and the invasion of south Lebanon,” Nicholas Blanford, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of a book about Hezbollah, told Al Jazeera. “That dealt Hezbollah a major blow to their popular standing and galvanised the election of Joseph Aoun as president and the formation of a new government that took a much stronger line against [the group].”

Before October 7, Hezbollah – a group representing Lebanon’s large Shia community – was the strongest political and military actor inside the country. The Iranian-backed group’s influence stretched across the region. Hezbollah was a key ally of the al-Assad regime in Syria and helped it retake territory from anti-Assad opposition groups. It also had connections with allies in places such as Iraq and Yemen.

Hezbollah had key electoral influence in Lebanon, where it often wielded its power to elect or collapse governments. It was also not against deploying its supporters against movements opposed to it, as in 2019 when they took to the streets of Beirut to beat back protesters calling for political reform of the country’s sectarian system, in which Hezbollah has become a key player in the years since the end of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war in 1990.

“October 7 set in motion a chain of events that Lebanon’s political system was not properly prepared to manage,” Jad Dilati, a political analyst from Nabatieh in southern Lebanon, told Al Jazeera. “Hezbollah opened its support front for Gaza on October 8 completely unilaterally, without any cabinet decision or governmental consensus or even taking into account the positions of the southern [Lebanese] residents who were most affected and still are most affected by these actions.”

But in September 2024, Israel unilaterally intensified attacks. The Israeli-induced carnage came quickly and heavily, with nearly 500 people killed on September 23 alone. When Nasrallah was said to have accepted a ceasefire – according to Lebanese officials quoted in media reports – Israel ordered his assassination and the evacuation of areas of Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Israel invaded southern Lebanon in October 2024 and stayed in Lebanese territory for more than two months after a ceasefire was agreed in November. Despite the ceasefire, Israel continued to destroy homes and infrastructure in southern Lebanon and refused to pull its troops out of five locations on Lebanese territory. Next door in Syria, the fall of the al-Assad regime in December 2024 also dealt a blow to the group, as its land routes to receive weapons and funding from Iran were disrupted.

Israel then invaded Lebanon again and launched widespread attacks on the country. It has killed more than 9,000 people in Lebanon since 2024 and displaced more than 1.2 million people, emptying entire regions of the country.

Israel now occupies large swathes of Lebanese territory, stretching up to 10 kilometres (more than 6 miles) from the border at some points. Dozens of villages, once filled with agriculture and people, are now uninhabited piles of dust and rubble. Hundreds of thousands remain displaced.