Lebanese people have taken to the streets in the capital Beirut, voicing support for the country’s resistance movement Hezbollah and protesting mounting US- and Israeli-led pressure towards the group’s disarmament.

The rallies took place in the city’s Dhahiyeh neighborhood on Monday night, with participants shouting slogans in favor of “the right to defense in the face of foreign invasion.”

The attendants, who included droves of bike-riding supporters, waved Hezbollah’s flags, hailing the movement as a “major” contributor to the country’s defense.

Hezbollah was formed in 1982 with a mandate to defend the country in the face of Tel Aviv, which has been occupying the country’s Shebaa Farms on the common border with Syria since 1967, as well as the regime’s increasing regional expansionism drive.

Ever since, both the regime and the United States, its biggest supporter, have been mounting pressure on the country to have the movement disarmed.

The pressure has grown since 2023 after Hezbollah began staging solidarity operations in support of the Gaza Strip that had come under a genocidal Israeli war.

It soon evolved into heavily Washington-backed escalated Israeli aggression against the country that went on to claim the lives of more than 4,000 people.

Participants in the Monday rally also held up pictures of the movement’s current officials as well as those who have been martyred, including the leading figures assassinated throughout the escalation.

Hezbollah itself has vowed to continue defending the nation, as it successfully has throughout both the escalation and two full-scale Israeli wars in the 2000s. It has warned the Lebanese against succumbing to the pressure tactics that are aimed at serving the regime’s expansionist ambitions.