Hezbollah European Union. After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 in support of the Free Lebanon State, Israel occupied a strip of south Lebanon, which was controlled by the South Lebanon Army (SLA), a Lebanese Christian militia supported by Israel. Hezbollah was founded in the early 1980s as part of an Iranian effort to aggregate a variety of militant Lebanese Shi'a groups into a unified organization. Hezbollah acts as a proxy for Iran in the ongoing Iran–Israel proxy conflict. Hezbollah was conceived by Muslim clerics and funded by Iran primarily to harass the Israeli occupation. Its leaders were followers of
Hezbollah political activities government in 2005 (reportedly in exchange for assurances regarding its military apparatus), it has remained staunchly opposed to the March 14 coalition's hegemonic ambitions. On the other hand, in resisting the 14 March coalition's bid for hegemony, the FPM and Hezbollah have allied. In February 2006, after weeks of committee-level negotiations, Michel Aoun and Hassan Nasrallah signed a memorandum of understanding that called for a broad range of reforms, from guaranteeing equal media access for candidates to allowing expatriate voting, that would level the slanted political playing field underlying the Hariri-Jumblatt coalition's grip on power. The FPM-Hezbollah memorandum met with