As Angie Nassar notes in NowLebanon‘s Blog, the army and Hezbollah are both competitors and partners:
Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah was in true frenemy form on Tuesday. He kept the Resistance out of the Lebanon-Israeli border clashes and praised the army’s efforts as courageous. Further, he said, “The LAF protects the Resistance, just as the Resistance protects the LAF, and the Lebanese people protect the LAF and the Resistance. This is the formula.
Hello, my name is Mustapha and I've been blogging about Lebanese society, business and politics since February 2005.
“But if Israel attacked Lebanon unprovoked, its questionable the LAF could defend the country without help from the Resistance.”
Make no mistake, if Israel wanted to, it could roll over Lebanon with ease. Hezbollah would be a pebble in the road.
The Lebanese Air Force consists of four obsolete fighter jets and one Cessna outfitted with Hellfires.
The presence of UNIFIL is a greater deterrent than every missile Hez can manage to import. Not because they have guns. Because they are international and have international support, and killing them is unacceptable.
@Undertoad
The IDF didn’t “roll over” Hizballah in 2006.
The IDF has been killing UNIFIL soldiers for quite some time with little or nothing being done about it. The the incident in Qana being the most famous example.
It wasn’t Israel’s intent to roll over H in 2006. If it was, the war would have been fought with tanks instead of jets with bombs.
The “little or nothing” includes a round of world outrage, UN debate, commentator fodder, investigation and reporting by NGOs and that is only for four dead UN workers. If they were killing them wholesale, as they would have to in a total war, it would quickly be an unacceptable situation for the rest of the world.