ABSTRACT
The war sharpened disagreements within the Lebanese public over Hezbollah's status as the only armed militia not disarmed after the Lebanese Civil War. Numerous other Middle Eastern countries have experienced greater and lesser degrees of civil unrest and upheaval, with Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen as the countries that are most seriously affected. The 2006 Lebanon War, although it caused enormous damage and human suffering in Lebanon, was in political terms part of the long struggle between Israel and the Hezbollah movement that had begun in the early 1980s with the foundation of the organization itself. Just as problems were heating up with the Palestinians in Gaza, the Israelis faced another set of challenges on their northern border with Lebanon, resulting in a war there with Hezbollah in July and August, 2006. After Israel had totally withdrawn from Lebanon in 2000, this led to the immediate collapse of its proxy Lebanese militia, the South Lebanon Army (SLA).
