#radwan unit

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

I mentioned that, as of Saturday, the Lebanese health minister said he was only aware of 11 victims of the massive airstrike that destroyed four buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

It has not increased since then.

How could that be?

Lebanese newspaper L'Orient le Jour (French) looks for the presumed hundreds of victims, and cannot find them.

But they do find a number of people who say that the entire neighborhood was already empty before the airstrikes.

Following the attack, the site was sealed off by Hezbollah security services as they searched for their leader. ...Most of the neighborhood’s residents had reportedly left the area the week before the attack, in a “natural evacuation,” according to the rescuer. “As the airstrikes (against the southern suburbs in recent days) increased, people fled. When the Maamoura neighborhood was bombed, there was no one there, and it was the same in Jamous and Kafa’at,” he said, referring to the strikes that took place throughout the night of September 27. The deadly strike came after a week of unprecedented attacks on Hezbollah, including the detonation of thousands of booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies that killed some 30 people and wounded thousands more across the country. In response, members of the Shiite party went door-to-door in the southern suburbs and advised people to leave their homes and seek shelter elsewhere. Rukaya, who has lived for 40 years in Burj al-Barajneh, the neighborhood beside Haret Hreik where Nasrallah was killed, told L’Orient Today that people knew the place was vulnerable to attack from the Israelis and had started to leave earlier that week. "You could hear crickets across the Burj" she said.

 Twenty-four hours after the strike, the Health Ministry announced that 11 people had been killed and 108 wounded in the Israeli strikes the previous day, but it did not specify where or when the deaths occurred, or whether Nasrallah and other possible Hezbollah victims were included in the death toll. The enormity of the damage caused by the strikes raised fears that the death toll could be much higher. The day after the attack, outgoing Health Minister Firas Abiad said at a press conference that the death toll could rise. Saad el-Ahmar stressed that on September 30, the search operations were almost over. The teams continue to clear the roads and sweep the area "to make sure that no bodies have been forgotten," the rescuer explained. However, he believes that the toll provided by the ministry should not increase significantly, given that it seems that very few people were present. 

The airstrike the previous week that killed some 15 members of Hezbollah's Radwan unit was in the same neighborhood, so that might have prompted residents to flee.

[eretzyisrael]

IAF strikes in Lebanon are exacting a heavy price from Hezbollah for its rocket fire, forcing the terrorist group into a war of attrition being fought on Israel’s terms.

Hezbollah has been firing rockets at northern Israel daily since Oct. 7, when Hamas massacred 1,200 persons near the Gaza border. Concerned about larger barrages and border infiltrations, around 250,000 Israelis have been evacuated from communities near Lebanon and Gaza.

Israel’s strikes have destroyed a significant quantity of Hezbollah infrastructure in open areas, forcing the terrorists to carry out even more of their activities in proximity to civilian villages.

“Hezbollah’s front line of outposts was hit very hard by the IDF and, among other things, the forces hit terrorist infrastructure, command and control facilities, lookouts and warehouses where weapons were stored,” a source in the Israel Defense Forces said.

The fact that Israel is striking Hezbollah targets in towns and villages hasn’t escaped the attention of the Lebanese evacuees. A Shi’ite source in Lebanon said that Israel has targeted Hezbollah facilities located in or very close to 91 villages across Southern Lebanon.

Moreover, 23 civilians have been killed in those strikes, and residents blame Hezbollah for putting them in harm’s way.

“Recently, [Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan] Nasrallah has also been hearing criticism from the Shi’ite communities who ask him whether you have pledged to be the defender of Lebanon or have you become the defender of Hamas and ISIS,” the IDF source said.

Hezbollah—to Hamas’s anger—has not opened a new front against Israel, and cannot even follow through on an oft-threatened “eye for an eye” deterrence.

“The ratio of casualties between the IDF forces and Hezbollah is 1-13,” an Israeli political source said.

This source added that the assessment is that Hezbollah will continue its war of attrition despite its inability to match Israel blow for blow.

However, Hezbollah still poses a considerable threat to Israel. Hezbollah recently moved additional forces into southern Lebanon from Syria, including 1,500 members of its elite Radwan Unit. This unit’s main mission is to rapidly infiltrate northern Israel, seize control of communities and take hostages, similar to Hamas’s attacks on Oct. 7.

The Radwan Unit gained considerable experience fighting in the Syrian civil war and is considered more advanced and more disciplined than Hamas.

However, monitoring and analysis of Hezbollah’s internal discourse indicates that the Oct. 7 attack took away Radwan Unit’s element of surprise.

As a result, Hezbollah’s backers tout the achievement of forcing tens of thousands of Israelis to evacuate their communities in the Upper Galilee.

[phobic-human]

Iranian Revolutionary Guard - Saberin Unit

[mariacallous]

Opening a kosher restaurant in New York City wasn’t always in the cards for Raif Rashed, a Druze from the village of Usfiya in northern Israel.

But as Rashed, the owner of Taboonia — a new Druze restaurant in the Garment District that’s currently seeking kosher certification — will be the first to tell you, sometimes life can take an unexpected turn, especially after a tragedy.

An engineer by trade, Rashed, 40, moved to Hackensack, New Jersey, in 2019 to take a job at an Israeli manufacturing company. In October 2023, he was visiting family in Israel when he extended his trip to could help his brother, Radda — who had run a catering business and food stall there, also called Taboonia, for a decade — work a busy event.

Fatefully, that event was the Nova Music Festival. Intended to be a 15-hour party overnight dance party, the festival was the site of one of the deadliest massacres that occurred when Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

During the violent chaos that unfolded, Rashed was separated from his brother, who ultimately survived. He sought cover behind a car belonging to his friend Erick Peretz, who was at the festival with his 16-year-old daughter Ruth, who had cerebral palsy and used a wheelchair. Rashed watched Peretz and his daughter seek cover behind an ambulance, then, to his horror, witnessed Hamas fighters burning the vehicle. Erick and Ruth Peretz’s bodies were identified 12 days later; they were among the more than 380 people murdered at the festival that day.

The experience turned Rashed’s life upside down. “I was in crisis [for] a year,” said Rashed, who added that, in the aftermath of the attack, “I looked middle-aged within hours.”

Rashed was stuck in Israel for several months, as his passport was stolen in the attack. When he finally returned to the United States, he quit his engineering job. Seeking comfort, he found himself cooking the foods of his childhood, like manakish — a type of flatbread served with toppings like za’atar, hummus, and labneh — or the very thin, crispy Druze pita, rolled into a wrap and filled with cucumber and tomato salad, hummus, hard boiled eggs, feta and chickpeas.

The Druze are a small religious and ethnic minority in the Middle East, with a population of about 1 million spread across communities in Syria, Lebanon and Israel. (Israel has vowed to protect the Druze in Syria if they come under attack from the new regime there, and this week Syrian Druze visited a Druze site in Israel for the first time in decades.) In Israel, Druze communities, comprising less than 2% of the population, tend to be patriotic and serve in the military, as Rashed did. “We don’t have [a] country, but we serve the country we live [in],” he said.

Inspired by reconnecting with Druze cuisine, Rashed decided to open an American outpost of Taboonia.

“For me to sell the food from our culture, and especially my mother’s recipes, this is my baby,” he said.

On Oct. 5, 2024 — almost exactly one year after the terrorist attack — he launched the Taboonia food stall, selling Druze food and coffee at the New Meadowlands Market at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey on Saturdays and at the Grand Bazaar on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on Sundays. It was an instant hit.

The same month he opened his food stall, Rashed met his future business partner, Ray Radwan. Radwan, a Druze born in New Jersey whose family is from Lebanon, works in the restaurant industry, and the pair decided to open a brick-and-mortar outpost of Taboonia at 832 Sixth Ave. Construction on the fast-casual dining space, which seats roughly a dozen people, began last November, and the restaurant had its soft-launch opening last month.

Until recently, the only Druze eatery in New York has Gazala’s, an Upper West Side restaurant run by Gazala Halabi. When Gazala’s was targeted with anti-Israel vandalism in February 2024, scores of local Jews turned out to show support. The pattern repeated that July: Following a Hezbollah rocket attack that took the lives of 12 children and teens in a Druze town in northern Israel, Jewish New Yorkers showed up at Gazala’s in droves.

“It really feels like a family,” Halabi said of the Jewish community’s support at the time. “I really feel, again, like I’m not alone.”

But the city’s significant population of kosher-keeping Jews could not join in the rush. Gazala’s is not kosher and serves shellfish alongside serves Middle Eastern specialties like kibbeh, meat-stuffed grape leaves, shawarma and lamb.

Taboonia is vegetarian, making it relatively easy to achieve kosher certification. Rashed said the restaurant is expected to receive its certification from Rabbi Zev Schwarcz at IKC in the coming weeks, and that there will be a grand opening celebration, likely after Passover. And because Taboonia isn’t owned by a Jew, it should be able to stay open on Shabbat and maintain its kosher status — an added perk.

“See, to be Druze, is a plus,” he said.

Rashed said it’s just good business to seek kosher certification. “Kosher, everyone can eat, OK?” he said. “But not kosher, not everyone can eat.”

But he is also grateful to the support he’s gotten from Jews in New York and beyond — including through a recent viral video that the actress and pro-Israel activist Noa Tishby posted about him on Instagram.

“My community is Jewish,” he said, adding that he attended school alongside Jewish students, and that his Hebrew is better than his Arabic or English. “I am around Jewish since 13 years old.”

Rashed’s six years in New York and New Jersey have influenced his palette, as well as the restaurant’s menu. In addition to traditional Druze foods, Taboonia also serves some cross-cultural treats, like everything bagel-seasoned bourekas, filled with mozzarella cheese.

Rashed hopes that Taboonia will be a place of repast and respite for New Yorkers of all stripes.

“Me and other Druze, Lebanese Druze, we [are] all of us all together [in the] middle of the war, in the middle of New York, to show the world we can make it a different way, and maybe we can make a change for some people, yes?” Rashed said. “Because [in] this place you’re going to hear Arabic, Hebrew, and English. No one is going to judge anyone about anything.”

[zvaigzdelasas]

21 Sep 24

[guerillas-of-history]

The al-Hajj Radwan Force

Hezbollah's special operations unit

[cavalierzee]

16 Ambulance Crew Executed By IOF In Rafah

Israeli forces have executed 16 members of Civil Defense and Red Crescent teams in Tel Al-Sultan, Rafah, southern Gaza, following prior coordination with the International Red Cross.

The teams had been missing for four days. Their bodies were found buried near a military barracks, and all their ambulances and firefighting vehicles were deliberately destroyed.

Red Crescent Victims:

Ezz Al-Din Shaath, Mustafa Khafaja, Saleh Ma’mar, Mohammed Bahloul, Ashraf Abu Labda, Mohammed Al-Hayla, Rifat Radwan, Asaad Al-Nasasra, Raed Al-Sharif

Civil Defense Victims:

Fouad Al-Jamal, Youssef Khalifa, Anwar Al-Attar, Zuhair Al-Farra, Sameer Al-Bahabsa, Ibrahim Al-Maghari

The body of Civil Defense head Anwar Al-Attar was recovered and transferred to Nasser Hospital. Search efforts for the remaining missing continue.

——

Civil Defense:

The Israeli army killed Palestinian Red Crescent and Civil Defense crews in cold blood during a humanitarian mission a few days ago northwest of Rafah.

The Israeli army buried the bodies of the martyrs at the site of the attack, making it difficult to locate them.

The scenes at the scene were horrific and confirm the deliberate targeting of ambulance and civil defense crews by the Israeli army.

The Israeli army destroyed five Palestinian Red Crescent and Civil Defense vehicles and buried some of them after targeting them.

What happened to the Palestinian Red Crescent and Civil Defense crews was a massacre that amounts to a war crime.

Palestinian Red Crescent:

• Our teams, with coordination and escort from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), successfully entered the Tel al-Sultan area in Rafah after five days of coordination attempts. The goal was to determine the fate of nine missing PRCS paramedics who had been besieged and targeted by Israeli occupation forces.

• The team faced major difficulties searching for signs of the martyrs due to the extensive destruction in the area and the erasure of its landmarks. They managed to retrieve one body belonging to the Civil Defense team.

• Due to the onset of darkness, the search operations could not continue and the team had to withdraw. Another attempt will be made tomorrow to re-enter the area, which has been under Israeli military incursion for five days, with ambulance and rescue teams barred from access.

Gaza Notice

[athena5898]

(RNN) The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine mourns their martyr, comrade Khawla Barakat (32), a unit leader in the women's organization at the Sheikh Radwan branch in West Gaza Governorate, who was martyred on Friday in the Halawa massacre (https://t.me/PalestineResist/76620?single) in Gaza City.

The DFLP pledges to Khawla and all martyrs to "continue on the path of comprehensive popular resistance and national unity, as the means to halt the ongoing genocide, thwart annexation and displacement projects, and achieve our people's aspirations for freedom and independence." They condemned the crime and renewed its pledge to continue the struggle and resistance until the end of the genocide, IOF withdrawal, reconstruction, and the liberation of land occupied since 1967.

[girlactionfigure]

⚠️ HEZBOLLAH MISSILE ATTACK ON HAIFA PROMPTS; ISRAEL DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY ⚠️

⚠️ For the first time since the 2006 Lebanon War, Hezbollah launched missiles directly at Haifa, forcing 300,000 Israelis to seek shelter. Rockets hit the area near Haifa University, marking a significant escalation in hostilities.

⚠️ Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, Chief of the General Staff of the IDF, provided an update from the IDF’s Underground Operations Center. He stated that the IDF has initiated a proactive offensive operation targeting Hezbollah’s combat infrastructure, which has been developed over the past two decades. Halevi emphasized that the objective is to create conditions for the safe return of northern Israel's residents.

⚠️ Defense Minister Yoav Gallant supported this statement, saying the IDF is systematically dismantling Hezbollah's military capabilities, built over 20 years. Gallant highlighted that Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, now stands isolated as entire units of Hezbollah’s Radwan Force have been neutralized and tens of thousands of rockets destroyed. His comments came during a visit to the IDF Operations Directorate’s command room.

⚠️ In light of the growing conflict, a state of emergency has been declared throughout Israel, according to Israel Hayom. 

◾ Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Lebanese people directly, clarifying that Israel’s conflict is with Hezbollah, not the Lebanese population.

◾ Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared that Israel will now "change the rules of the game," signaling a shift in military strategy moving forward.

◾ Meanwhile, the Pentagon remains uncertain whether Israel is preparing for a ground incursion into Lebanon, but it acknowledges that Hezbollah's actions have escalated the situation.

⚠️ The IDF has begun dropping leaflets in southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley, urging Lebanese civilians to evacuate the areas. Additionally, Reuters reported that Jordan has suspended all flights to Beirut until further notice.

[workersolidarity]

[ 📹 Smoke billowing out from buildings while the Israeli occupation army detonates entire residential squares the once housed countless civilian families in the Al-Shujaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza City, leaving Palestinians sleeping in unsafe housing, damaged and broken homes, hospitals and schools, before being driven out once again by the Zionist occupation army. 📈 Current death toll stands at 37'925, with another 87'141 wounded since October 7th. ]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🏘️💥🚑 🚨

ZIONIST ARMY COMMITS SEVERAL NEW MASSACRES IN GAZA AS ISRAELI OCCUPATION FORCES DESTROY ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOODS

The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) committed several new massacres today, acting in continuation of the Zionist entity's ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing operation targeting the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip.

According to reporting by Palestinian public broadcaster, PalestineTV, occupation fighter jets bombed a house in the city of Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, killing 12 Palestinian civilians and wounding a number of others.

Medical sources say the Zionist army bombed the Aslim family home in Deir al-Balah, after which, the broken bodies of 12 civilians were brought to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

In another atrocity, IOF warplanes bombed residents in the Mansoura area of the Al-Shujaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza City, with the resulting wounded transported to Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the city. Once at the hospital, 12 Palestinians were pronounced dead on arrival.

Similarly, Zionist soldiers detonated entire residential blocks in the Shujaiya neighborhood, while another occupation air raid targeted east of the Al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City.

In further war crimes, occupation aircraft launched violent airstrikes that targeted west of the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, killing three Palestinians, while Israeli artillery shelling pummeled the same neighborhood, as well as central Rafah.

Local medical sources are reporting that the bodies of at least 31 martyrs have arrived to hospitals in the Gaza Strip since dawn on Tuesday.

In yet another massacre, Zionist warplanes bombed a residential house in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, killing four Palestinians and wounding several others, while another civilian was wounded after the occupation army bombed a house east of Gaza City as well.

Evacuation orders from the Israeli occupation army for the European Gaza Hospital in Khan Yunis has resulted in the closure of the health center, forcing more than 320 patients, as well as all the hospital's staff, to leave the facilities under threat from the Zionist military, according to the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus.

A fuel shortage has also left Gaza's remaining hospitals on the brink of disaster if they don't receive at least 80'000 liters of fuel per day, but they have not received a fuel delivery since the end of last month, when they received between 195'000 and 200'000 liters.

The situation means Gaza's handful of remaining hospitals are facing a fuel shortage that threatens to interrupt vital and basic services.

At the same time, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA) warned that some 250'000 civilians in Gaza will be displaced once again with the latest forced evacuation of Khan Yunis, at gunpoint by the Israeli occupation army, and warned that nowhere in Gaza is safe.

Many families have been displaced a multitude of times, each time forced to arrange temporary housing and facilities, only to be uprooted again and again.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Special Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs and Reconstruction in Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, said on Tuesday that the "war has not only created a humanitarian crisis, but has also unleashed a spiral of human misery, as the public health system has collapsed, schools have been destroyed, and the disruption of the education system threatens future generations."

“In Gaza, there is no safe place,” she went on, adding that “on my visits to Gaza, I am greeted by voices echoing one heartbreaking question: Will our suffering ever end?”

The current death toll stands at 37'925 Palestinians killed, while another 87'141 others have been wounded as a result of the Zionist entity's ongoing war of extermination in the Gaza Strip, beginning with the events of October 7th, 2023.

July 2nd, 2024

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@WorkerSolidarityNews

[tieflingkisser]

At least 38 killed in Israeli strike on suburb in Lebanon’s Beirut

Children, women among victims of attack which Israel says targeted members of Hezbollah’s Radwan special forces unit.

The death toll from an Israeli air attack in Beirut’s southern suburbs has risen to 38 people, including three children and seven women, Lebanese authorities say. The strike, which wrecked two buildings in the Lebanese capital’s Dahiya district during rush hour on Friday, also injured more than 60 people, Health Minister Firass Abiad told a news conference on Saturday. The three children killed were aged four, six and 10, according to Abiad. Emergency personnel was still searching for 17 people under the rubble. “[The rescue operation] could continue for another day or so,” Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari reported from Beirut. “There is still a sense of shock and fear,” she added. “Many of the shops in this area are closed, there are very few people present as many have chosen to pack up and leave.”

[...]

The Israeli attacks in Lebanon have serious implications for international law, said Ibrahim Fraihat, professor of international conflict resolution at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. “What we are seeing in Lebanon takes the disrespect of international humanitarian law to a [new] level,” Fraihat told Al Jazeera. “These violations are being normalised by the silence of the West.” He warned that the escalation of tensions in Lebanon was bound to divert attention from Gaza, allowing for more human rights violations to take place there.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

By Emanuel Fabian and Jacob Magid

The Israel Defense Forces said Friday that it killed Hezbollah’s top military commander and at least 10 other senior commanders in a rare airstrike targeting the terror group’s stronghold in Beirut, as the sides appeared closer than ever to entering a full-fledged war.

The IDF said the most prominent target of its airstrike, Ibrahim Aqil, was the head of Hezbollah’s military operations, the acting commander of the terror group’s elite Radwan Force, and was leading a planned operation to invade the Galilee.

Two security sources in Lebanon confirmed Aqil’s death, Reuters reported.

Aqil was also the most senior military member of the Jihad Council, Hezbollah’s top military body, after Israel’s assassination of Fuad Shukr in a strike in Beirut in July.

He had been wanted by the United States for his role in the 1983 bombings of the American Embassy in Lebanon and the US Marines barracks in Beirut.

In a curt statement issued on Friday evening, soon after the start of Shabbat, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “Our goals are clear, and our actions speak for themselves.”

Hezbollah official Ibrahim Aqil in an undated photo. (US Department of State)

Before and after the strike targeting Aqil, Hezbollah fired some 200 rockets Friday at the northern Galilee and the Golan Heights. No casualties were reported following the barrages, which happened as the IDF alerted residents in the area to remain close to bomb shelters.

[phobic-human]

Iranian Revolutionary Guard - Saberin Unit

[mariacallous]

In less than a week, Israel has managed to significantly degrade Hezbollah’s military capabilities, communications systems, and chain of command. First, exploding pagers and walkie-talkies undermined the group’s ability to communicate. Then came the assassination of operations commander Ibrahim Aqil on Friday—along with 14 top Radwan Force commanders—which was a major setback for the Lebanese militant group’s top leadership and command unit, the Jihad Council. From the founding members of Hezbollah’s military structure, only Ali Karaki survives today.

This escalation comes after Israeli leaders decided to confront the continuous threat to the country’s north posed by Hezbollah. Last Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet decided to set a new war goal: the safe return of Israeli residents to the country’s north.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is not conceding, however. In a speech given on Sept. 19, Nasrallah doubled down on attacking Israel’s north. Despite his acknowledgement of Israel’s technological advances, the leader of Hezbollah refused to back down and threated that “no military escalation, no killings, no assassinations, and no all-out war can return residents to the border.”

Immediately after his speech, Israel struck approximately 30 Hezbollah rocket launchers and infrastructure sites, which contained approximately 150 launcher barrels, according to a spokesperson from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The IDF also hit Hezbollah’s weapons storage facilities in multiple areas in southern Lebanon, followed by more intense strikes over the weekend, with Israel claiming on Saturday that it had eliminated 400 rocket launchers across southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley. The scale of these strikes indicates Israel’s appetite for escalation and willingness to widen the circle of targets.

Despite the calls to go all in, an Israeli decision to launch a full-scale war or land incursion has not been made yet. Such a decision would bring the country and its civilian infrastructure much damage, especially if Hezbollah unleashes its most advanced missiles. It seems that Israel is determined to push Hezbollah to change its strategy and revisit its involvement in the conflict, which the group initiated on Oct. 8, 2023, a day after the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Hezbollah now faces a choice: to preserve what is left of its military assets and leadership, or to maintain its threat over the north of Israel.

The losses that Hezbollah suffered last week were immense, but the group lost the deterrence battle months ago. Since last October—when Hezbollah decided to attack Israel in support of Hamas—Israel has been successful at degrading the group’s military capabilities with precise targeted attacks, and it has done so largely without causing many civilian casualties. In the past year, Israel has killed more than 500 people—most of them Hezbollah militants— including top and elite commanders, such as Wissam al-Tawil, Taleb Abdullah, Fuad Shukr, and others.

In addition, Hezbollah’s military infrastructure south of the Litani River has been demolished, along with a large number of its weapons depots and military infrastructure across Lebanon. The group’s responses focused mostly on the north of Israel, targeting military bases and infrastructure while mostly avoiding civilian casualties, major cities, and civilian infrastructure.

At the beginning of the war, the goal of Hezbollah and Iran—the group’s main backer—was to reap the benefits from any political or diplomatic solution that would end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. But along the way, they managed to achieve an unprecedented feat—to move the buffer zone from the south of Lebanon to the north of Israel. Around 60,000 Israelis remain internally displaced, and Hezbollah has communicated this to its constituency as the biggest ever achievement against Israel. It will be very difficult to walk back from this.

If Israel widens the circle of targets to hit advanced military assets, such as the facilities that store and produce precision-guided missiles, Hezbollah might revisit its threat to the north. Today, the group is walking a very thin line between its assets and its threats, and the question is how many more losses it can endure.

Israel sees this as an opportunity to push further—and raise the price for Hezbollah until it becomes unbearable. Although a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah is a real possibility, both parties still prefer a diplomatic solution. Israel is trying to keep its attacks targeted, and Hezbollah is trying hard not to provoke Israel or be forced to use and waste its most valuable military assets—namely, precision missiles—which Iran regards as an insurance policy.

Indeed, Israel could be escalating today to avoid war; that is, to push Hezbollah to accept the only diplomatic solution on the table—the one presented by Amos Hochstein (the U.S. envoy for international energy affairs) to delink Lebanon from Gaza and implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. This means that Hezbollah will have to accept a separate cease-fire agreement, withdraw its military presence to north of the Litani River, roughly 18 miles away from the border, and allow displaced Israelis to return safely to the north.

Until last week, Israel and Hezbollah had been walking a very thin line between a full-scale war and a calculated pattern of attacks and responses.

Hezbollah lost military infrastructure, commanders, and weapons, but most importantly, it lost security and trust among its ranks. After every assassination or strike, and specifically with the mass explosions of pagers and radios, Hezbollah now fears more in-depth infiltration in its ranks by the Israeli intelligence agencies. And its militants lost trust in their own, fearing that anyone could be an Israeli spy.

The group also lost trust in technology and has no reliable communications system that it could rely on for any military response or war. The only way left is verbal communications, which its leaders resorted to when the in-person meeting between Akil and the Radwan Forces was scheduled—and then hit by an Israeli strike. The level of infiltration is deeper than they know.

Additionally, Hezbollah has lost the trust of its own community. If it cannot protect itself, many are asking, then how can it protect its constituency and supporters? It will be very difficult to assure its community of safety and security while walking—and exploding—among them. Worse still, the group is no longer Iran’s success story in the region.

The fact that Israel could kill Shukr and Akil in the middle of their stronghold in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh is a big breach. However, what is a lot more troubling for Hezbollah’s leadership is its loss of the element of surprise, which has always been part of its military strategy. Israel knew exactly when and how Hezbollah was planning to retaliate for Shukr in August, as the IDF launched a preemptive strike against the group’s infrastructure, including the launchers it had prepared for the operation.

All these losses, in addition to the group’s incapacity thus far to conduct an effective military response against Israel, is both humiliating and embarrassing for Hezbollah. But on the military level, it is worse: Hezbollah is more deterred than ever.

The group could eventually recover from these losses, rebuild its communication network, counter Israeli intelligence, and regain trust among its community. But this is all going to take a long time, a luxury that Hezbollah might not be able to afford.

Today, any response to Israel’s escalation requires the militant group to resolve the following concerns:

First, without a proper communications system, Hezbollah cannot coordinate on targeting, responses, or logistics. It also cannot easily use verbal or written communications—similar to the system that Hamas is currently using inside Gaza’s tunnels. Lebanon is much bigger, and without an efficient and fast communication system, Hezbollah’s military capability to conduct war is largely diminished.

Second, many top Hezbollah officials have been killed or injured. The pagers that exploded hit many of the group’s senior and mid-level operatives. The shipment contained 5,000 pagers, and Hezbollah’s fighting force alone has been independently estimated to comprise at least 20,000 militants. Pagers were provided to officials and fighters with special skills and missions; that is, those who need to be protected. Families of Hezbollah members of Lebanon’s parliament and high-ranking commanders, in addition to high-level security personnel, were among the casualties—not to mention Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, who was reportedly in close proximity to an exploding device.

Finally, Hezbollah still hasn’t figured out how deeply infiltrated by Israeli intelligence it is. Sources close to its inner circle have told Foreign Policy that the group’s leaders are looking into every single piece of electronic gear they own, and that they are worried that their cars, motorcycles, and even their advanced missile factories are booby-trapped and could go off any minute.

The group will have to conduct an in-depth investigation to make sure that other items have not been infiltrated or compromised by the Israelis, which will take weeks. And if Hezbollah fears that its missiles facilities are booby-trapped or monitored, it will be logistically very difficult to safely move these weapons in order to launch them.

The Israeli government seems to think that Hezbollah’s setbacks are a good opportunity for the IDF to launch a war to further erode the group’s capabilities. But a war similar to that of 2006 might cause Israel real damage without leading to the elimination of the Hezbollah threat. Moreover, it could lead to more international isolation and more civilian casualties on both sides, as well as risk a regional war from multiple fronts.

What the IDF and its external intelligence agency, Mossad, have achieved in the past week has been very effective. There is no need for a full-scale war that would cause civilian losses, bring back “axis of resistance” rhetoric, and unite regional and international public opinion against Israel.

Until a long-term solution is reached, the best-case scenario is for Hezbollah to accept a separate cease-fire, disconnected from the war in Gaza. Diplomatic messaging from the United States and its allies needs to focus on this objective and pressure Hezbollah to delink the two fronts. For Iran and Hezbollah, nothing is more important than their military assets—especially precision missiles.

U.S. diplomatic efforts need to take advantage of Hezbollah’s vulnerability. In addition to forcing the group to accept a separate cease-fire, negotiations should be focused on preventing a full-scale war, allowing residents from both sides to return home, and undermining Hezbollah’s and Iran’s narratives of victory and resistance.

U.N. Resolution 1701 is not sustainable because it does not include punitive measures, and Hezbollah will eventually violate it. Therefore, a long-term policy will have to be designed after a cease-fire is achieved in order to contain Hezbollah in Lebanon—a policy that will address interrupting its weapons supply routes from Tehran via Iraq and Syria as well as help the Lebanese state regain its sovereignty when it comes to decisions of war and peace.

[zvaigzdelasas]

A[n anonymous] source close to Hezbollah told AFP that an Israeli airstrike on Friday killed the group’s elite Radwan unit chief, while the Israeli military said it conducted “a targeted strike” on the Lebanese capital.[...]

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported “an enemy raid targeting an apartment in a residential building in the al-Jamous area of the southern suburb” of Beirut.

20 Sep 24

[guerillas-of-history]

The al-Hajj Radwan Force

Hezbollah's special operations unit