Syrian Rebels: Hezbollah Occupying Parts of Syria

Demands Arab League Intervention to Expel Hezbollah

Syrian opposition figure George Sabra has petitioned the Arab League to intervene in the ongoing civil war yet again today, accusing Hezbollah of invading Syria and occupying several border villages.

Hezbollah does indeed seem to be contesting control over several border villages, all of them Shi’ite villages with significant Lebanese populations, with the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which has ordered all civilians to leave them.

But the FSA has already responded to that dispute by attacking Lebanon and promising to “eliminate” Hezbollah nationwide, suggesting that they believe they have the situation well in hand, and also suggesting that if the Arab League is worried about sovereignty along the Syria-Lebanon border, they’d be further ahead worrying about the small coastal nation getting sucked into the much larger nation’s civil war.

Hezbollah insists it won’t abandon the villages so long as there are Lebanese civilians in them at risk of attack by the Syrian rebels, saying that no one else seemed to be willing to protect them.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.