The Shiite population of Southern Lebanon had suffered during the years of fighting between the Palestinian guerrillas and Israeli military since the 1970s.

Many residents of South Lebanon felt an initial relief after the Palestinian guerrillas where pushed back from the area.

The IDF launched purges in the Shiite villages remaining under occupation, arresting people suspected of being involved in the resistance.

[1] Bazzi was involved in the planting of deadly road side bombs, such as in the villages of Houla, Markaba and al-Abbad in the 1990s.

Gen. Eli Amitai, the head of the Israel Defense Forces liaison unit in southern Lebanon and thus the effective commander of the security zone.

[2] December 14, 1996, Amitai was injured when the IDF convoy he was travelling in was ambushed in the eastern sector of the security zone.

[6] Israeli withdrawal from the security zone in the spring of 2000 precipitated a virtual collapse of the Israel-controlled South Lebanon Army.

On May 26, 2000, Hezbollah General-Secretary Hassan Nasrallah held his famous victory speech in Bint Jbeil, where he compared the power of Israel to that of a spider's web.

After the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon, Khalid Bazzi returned to his hometown, Bint Jbeil, and continued his involvement with military activities.

Bazzi organized the 2006 Hezbollah cross-border raid, in which eight Israeli soldiers were killed and two were abducted, which ultimately triggered the 2006 Lebanon War.

The Hezbollah defenders eventually withdrew causing heavy casualties to the Israelis, including two IDF officers and six other soldiers killed.

[8] On July 23, the Israeli army launched Operation Webs of Steel 2 which was designed as a pincer movement, attacking Bint Jbeil simultaneously from the east and the west.

First Maroun ar-Ras and later Bint Jbeil was attacked by four Israeli elite divisions, while it was only defended by a company-sized force (100-140 men) of mainly local militia.

The 2006 Lebanon War would have been a "clear achievement for Israel had the initial limited ground operations in Maroun ar-Ras and Bint Jbeil been successful".

[13] On the first anniversary of his death in 2007, Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar revealed that Bazzi both took part in the cross-border operation and that he died as commander in the battle of Bint Jbeil.

[14] According to Robert Baer, the former CIA case officer in Lebanon, the Americans and the Israelis never knew the identities of Hezbollah's field commanders.

In July 2013, Haaretz reported that Hezbollah "for the first time" revealed the identity of Khalid Bazzi as the commander of the abduction unit and that he was subsequently killed in the war.