Hezbollah 1985–88 War of the Camps. However, Hezbollah's early primary focus was ending Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon following Israel's 1982 invasion and siege of Beirut. Amal, the main Lebanese Shia political group, initiated guerrilla warfare. In 2006, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak stated, "When we entered Lebanon … there was no Hezbollah. We were accepted with perfumed rice and flowers by the Shia in the south. It was our presence there that created Hezbollah". Hezbollah waged an asymmetric war using suicide attacks against the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israeli targets outside of Lebanon. Hezbollah is reputed to have
Hezbollah foreign relations the Syrians, but Hezbollah's real leadership is 'the rule of the jurists'. Though Hezbollah presence in Syria was limited before 2012, Damascus had been the most important facilitator of Iranian support to the group and became increasingly active as a provider of material and political assistance on its own in the 2000s. Since 2012 Hezbollah is helping the Syrian government during the Syrian Civil War in the fight against the rebels, which Hezbollah has described as a Wahhabi-Zionist conspiracy to destroy its alliance with Syria against Israel. Hezbollah is a role model to Hamas in terms of its military, political,