The way the WordPress .htaccess file works, is it only routes URLs if the requested file does not exist.
For example, http://www.example.org/file_exists.html
would return file_exists.html, however http://www.example.org/no_file_here.html
would be re-routed to WordPress, because the file does not exist.
I can't see a reason as to why you would need to modify your .htaccess to allow an html file to be viewable, unless you are manually rewriting the URLs for it - in which case, there are some plugins available for wordpress to include the rewriting in the .htaccess file.
As was previously mentioned, WordPress will only modify between the #BEGIN and #END lines, nothing else. However that's not to say there's nothing else modifying the file. For example, you may have a plugin such as WP Bulletproof Security, or WP Super Cache, which will completely overwrite the .htaccess. This is where a wordpress rewriting plugin can come in handy, as these plugins that modify the .htaccess file would check with a rewriting plugin first to include your changes.
As is recommended by WordPress's security team, you can change the file permissions of the file to disallow writing, however this would break any legitimate plugins. See Hardening WordPress.