The sound of ambulances has been echoing in Beirut for the past week, sowing panic and chaos in the Lebanese capital. The toll of the unprecedented attacks that simultaneously detonated thousands of booby-trapped pagers, then the next day the walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah, is 39 dead, including two children, and more than 2,900 injured. The shock is brutal for the Lebanese Shiite militia, armed by Iran, and considered one of the most powerful para-state organizations in the world. Israel has demonstrated in a few days its technological and military superiority, and its breakthroughs in intelligence, without sparing civilians.
Barely recovered from the first shock, Hezbollah was immediately the target of a new operation on Friday, September 20, – this time aerial – intended to eliminate one of its senior commanders. It resulted in the destruction of an entire building in the densely populated southern suburbs of Beirut, leaving at least 45 dead, including 21 civilians (about twenty people are still missing) according to the latest report. Two commanders, Ibrahim Akil and Ahmad Wehbé, as well as 14 fighters were killed. Ibrahim Akil succeeded Fouad Chokr as head of the elite al-Radwan unit, assassinated in a targeted attack at the end of July. He was on the list of terrorists wanted by the United States for his participation in deadly attacks in Lebanon in 1983, forty years earlier to the day.
“A sword thrust that pierced his entrails”
The operation is the third Israeli attack in Beirut since the beginning of the year – on January 2, the IDF eliminated a Hamas leader, Salah al-Arouri. It signals a new phase in the conflict since Hezbollah launched a support front in Gaza, the day after the massacre perpetrated on October 7 by Hamas in Israel. Just after announcing the shift “to the north” of the military offensive that has been underway for almost a year in Gaza – which has killed more than 40,000 people in Gaza according to Hamas – the Hebrew state is therefore matching its words with actions.
The blows inflicted on Hezbollah are of “unprecedented” severity, its secretary general admitted during a televised intervention the day after the double attack on the telecommunications devices. But Hassan Nasrallah, who has promised a “terrible punishment” for Israel, refuses to throw in the towel. He challenged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to achieve his goal of “bringing back the Israeli residents evacuated from the north” as long as there is no ceasefire in Gaza, Hezbollah’s condition for stopping its cross-border fire.
The Islamist organization has been deeply shaken by this sequence. It has suffered “a sword blow that has pierced its entrails,” explains Mohanad Hage Ali, a researcher at the Carnegie Center for the Middle East. He adds: “The impact is transversal on a very large group of members working in the different civilian or military branches of the organization. This will certainly affect its functioning and it will take time to recover.”
The exact scope of the destabilization is, however, difficult to assess. For Kassem Kassir, an analyst close to Hezbollah, its operational capacity remains solid. If the weapons fell silent at the border on the day of the pager attack, it was not, according to him, because the communications network was disrupted. “The priority was to understand what was happening. And in particular to check whether a large-scale Israeli military operation was imminent in order to prepare for it,” says this specialist.
“Clear security flaws”
In the hours following the explosion of thousands of beepers, Hezbollah stepped up its strikes on military targets in northern Israel “to show that, on the ground, the men, the will, and the system” are intact, says Nicholas Blanford, a researcher at the Atlantic Council. For him, the losses inflicted on its chain of command are significant, but surmountable. “It’s a large organization, which can count on many people with years of experience, and who are able to move up the ranks.” The real problem, according to this expert, are “the obvious security flaws that it cannot plug.”
After the pager operation, Hezbollah sought to avoid critical medical information being intercepted by Israel. The cameras, usually quick to visit victims in their hospital beds, were forced to remain discreet. Many of the wounded were transferred to Iran, presumably to preserve their anonymity. But the simultaneous influx of thousands of victims into hospitals did not always help to preserve secrecy. According to several media reports, Ibrahim Akil was spotted leaving the hospital after his pager exploded, which made it easier to eliminate him later.
Beyond the dead and wounded, the impact is moral and psychological. “Israel’s actions are eroding the trust of the community surrounding Hezbollah, built on the protection provided by a highly professional military and security apparatus,” writes Randa Slim of the Middle East Institute. Hence the calls for calm coming from several figures close to the party who are urging their supporters to heal their wounds. Like the journalist Hassan Ileik, for whom it is more necessary than ever “to thwart the enemy’s attempts to make us doubt the resistance”. The turnout at the victims’ funerals organized in recent days testifies to the intact mobilization of Hezbollah’s direct base, whose social dimension goes far beyond that of a militia.
The concern of the Shiite community, as well as that of the Lebanese, is on the other hand more perceptible as the tension is at its peak, in the absence of a diplomatic horizon. Despite calls for restraint emanating from Washington, the conditions for a return to calm are far from being met. “Tactically, the Israelis clearly show that they have the advantage since they have entered a new, much more aggressive period. They are betting on the fact that Hezbollah will hold back its blows again to avoid a generalized war that Iran does not want either,” believes Nicholas Blanford.
But strategically the balance is the same, continues this expert. And to specify. “Hezbollah still uses mainly weapons like Katyusha rockets whose technology dates back to the Second World War, and some unguided missiles with limited range. It keeps in reserve the long-range guided missiles of the Fateh-110 series whose precision is 10 to 20 meters and the explosive charge of 500 kilos.” The Israelis know this.
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