How Hezbollah has turned northern Israel into a ghost town, and contributed to Israel's unravelling
How Hezbollah has turned northern Israel into a ghost town, and contributed to Israel's unravelling
Israel is sinking ever deeper into a quagmire of its own making.
On May 25 this year, southern Lebanon celebrated its 24th year of liberation from the brutal Israeli occupation that ended in 2000. The liberation after 18 years of occupation by the Zionist state came in large part due to the armed struggle led by the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah.
Since its founding in 1982 as a direct reaction to the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, Hezbollah, led by its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, has gone on to become one of the biggest thorns in the Israeli flesh, challenging its expansionist desire to extend its land theft and all-around butchery beyond the boundaries of historic Palestine to Lebanon, among other Arab lands in its neighbourhood.
The Israelis haven’t exactly kept their desires under wraps either. Within the very first month of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the Israeli war minister, Yoav Gallant, was unambiguous: “What we’re doing in Gaza, we can also do in Beirut.” In December, Netanyahu echoed his minister’s desire: “If Hezbollah chooses to start an all-out war, then it will single-handedly turn Beirut and South Lebanon, not far from here, into Gaza and Khan Yunis.” The very next month, Gallant was running his mouth again, this time with a technological metaphor: “They [Hezbollah] see what is happening in Gaza. They know we can copy-paste to Beirut.”
Talk is cheap. The conquest and balkanisation of all of Lebanon, is without a doubt an intrinsic part of the the Greater Israel project envisioned by the Zionists. However, Hezbollah has been throwing a massive spanner in those evil works. Indeed, when the Israelis attempted a ground invasion into southern Lebanon — the Hezbollah stronghold — the Zionist troops had to retrace their steps back into the stolen Palestinian lands. Announcing the successful operation against the invading Zionists, Hezbollah in its update on March 4, had said:
In support of our steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, in support of their brave and honorable resistance, and during an attempt by an enemy Israel force to infiltrate into Lebanese territory in the Wadi Qatmoun area opposite to Rmeish, the fighters of the Islamic Resistance, at 11:45 PM on Sunday, 03-03-2024, targeted them with rocket weapons, achieving direct hits.
Not just foiling attempted ground incursion, Hezbollah has been continuously striking northern Israel, especially the settlements in Upper Galilee and occupied Golan Heights since October 8, when the resistance movement declared its intention to help the resistance in Gaza for as long as the genocidal Israeli campaign in the besieged enclave continues. (Notably, a good number of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon trace their origins in the Galilee region.)
Hezbollah warfare
Hezbollah has an enviable weapons arsenal that includes hundreds of thousands of rockets, missiles, and drones, among a whole host of other weapons that is not public knowledge but is silently acknowledged. And it has been making good use of its extensive firepower by attacking Israeli military bases and surveillance installations across its border with Israel.
Furthermore, with Lebanon sharing borders with Syria, Hezbollah doesn’t face supply chain issues, unlike the resistance factions inside the blockaded Gaza Strip whose weapons manufacturing programme relies primarily on their ability to repurpose unexploded Israeli ordnance and ingenuity. In comparison, the Hezbollah arsenal is easily replenished. It goes to show the formidable challenge that the Lebanese resistance poses for the Israelis, who have struggled to make a significant dent to the resource-constrained Palestinian resistance in the eight months of the ongoing fighting.
In a compilation video released on June 2 (attached above), Hezbollah announced completion of 2,000 military operations against the genocidal Zionist state since October 8. The video depicts a constant increase in the intensity and area of operations within the Israeli borders.
Set to Arabic instrumental music from a couple of generations ago, and graphics that hark back to the same era, Hezbollah’s media wing has continuously produced video evidence of its operations targeting the Zionist entity.
Moreover, all updates from the Hezbollah stable since October 8 have underlined why it is participating in this resistance against the Zionists, as they open with the message:
In support of our steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, in support of their brave and honorable resistance…
Furthermore, Hezbollah’s textual updates have typically been accompanied by videos of the operation. And for good reason. Nasrallah in one of his broadcasts since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza highlighted that without video evidence, the Zionists would simply reject Hezbollah’s claims — as they are prone to do. It is hard to refute video evidence.
The Lebanese resistance, on the other hand, doesn’t just publish evidence of its successful operations, but it also acknowledges the personnel losses it takes in the fighting. It puts out short biographies of fallen fighters along with their photos; and their funerals are public events. Over 300 of its fighters have perished along with around 100 civilians so far. Meanwhile, the Israelis have publicised only 14 deaths of its army personnel from the Hezbollah attacks. Not even Israelis believe what its government says. They appear to be putting more faith in Hezbollah’s announcements. As one Israeli website put it:
“The entire country watches what is happening in the north despite the imposed censorship, the Israelis are waiting for Hezbollah to announce the attacks.”
Increasing intensity in the Israeli north
Beginning with low-intensity warfare in the early days of this genocide, they have continuously escalated as the Israelis have become increasingly brazen in their barbarism in Gaza as well as in their attacks on the Lebanese territory.
Hezbollah has targeted the famed Iron Dome, surveillance equipment, radar monitoring systems, and military bases, among other sites of military relevance in northern Israel. Meanwhile, the Israelis have taken to bombing not just the resistance fighters and Hezbollah’s military capabilities but, as is their wont, they have increasingly targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure.
Back in November, they targeted a hospital in southern Lebanon. Such criminality has shown no sign of abating since then. Over a hundred civilians — including entire families — have been killed by the indiscriminate Israeli bombings. Just last week they directly targeted an ambulance with a drone attack that killed a paramedic. A news report noted that “ambulances and ambulatory units in Odaisseh, Blida, and Hanin have previously been targeted by artillery shelling” by the Israelis.
Hezbollah has made it clear that killing civilians constitutes a red line for the Lebanese militia. It has duly responded to Israeli aggression against its civilians. In a February 16 broadcast, a day after the barbaric killing of several Lebanese civilians and his militia’s response to it, Nasrallah ominously remarked that Israelis will pay for the indiscriminate attacks on the innocents by their government. He declared:
We tell the enemy that targeting civilians only increases our anger, broadens our scope, and intensifies our work in the resistance.
The targeting of the Kiryat Shmona settlement with dozens of Katyusha rockets and a number of Falaq missiles is an initial response.
The enemy will pay the price of shedding the blood of our women and children in Nabatiyeh, Al-Sawwana, and elsewhere, in blood.
The price of this blood will be blood. Not sites, not vehicles, not surveillance equipment; this is a part of the battle that will continue.
When it comes to civilians, for us this issue has a special sensitivity. The answer to the massacre must be to continue and escalate the work on the front.
We cannot tolerate harm to civilians, and the enemy must understand that it has gone too far in this matter.
This front will not stop, no matter how much you transgress, kill, and threaten.
Northern Israel on fire
True to its promise, Hezbollah’s incessant attacks on the northern Israeli territories have made those stolen settlements uninhabitable. Even the sirens have started failing, presumably due to being overwhelmed by the unceasing barrage from the Lebanese border.
Following the killing of a paramedic and a woman among four civilians towards the end of May, Hezbollah has upped the intensity significantly and for the first three days of June intense fires have been raging across the northern Israeli settlements, especially in Kiryat Shmona. Those who had chosen to remain in the stolen lands had to be ultimately evacuated by the Israeli authorities as a state of emergency has been declared in the region.
The Times of Israel on June 3 reported difficulty in putting out fires even as multiple firefighting teams remained at work:
A large blaze is spreading in the Ramim Ridge area, near Kiryat Shmona, reportedly as a result of rocket impacts in the area over the past day.
The Fire and Rescue Services says nine firefighting teams are working in the area, and the blaze is not yet under control.
Meanwhile, the service says firefighting efforts also continue in the Golan Heights, following a major fire sparked yesterday as a result of a Hezbollah rocket barrage at the Katzrin area.
Even before the escalations in June, Hezbollah had raised the bar in May. Israeli Channel 12 reported a 36 percent increase in Hezbollah attacks through May.
The Israeli fear of Hezbollah
Other than civilians, the Israelis have targeted Hezbollah fighters as well as members of the Palestinian resistance based in Lebanon with drones, killing many personnel in the resistance axis.
In one such attack, the Israelis killed key Hamas official Saleh Al-Arouri in January. Notably, they targeted him at his home in the Lebanese capital Beirut, marking a dangerous escalation in hostilities since Nasrallah had underlined in August 2023 that assassinations of resistance personnel belonging to any faction inside Lebanon would not be tolerated and would yield “a strong reaction”:
Any assassination on Lebanese soil that targets a Lebanese, Palestinian, Iranian, or any person, will certainly yield a strong reaction and will not be tolerated.
The Israelis knew of the danger that their act caused and immediately began to make attempts to absolve themselves of their crime.
Israeli official Mark Regev did an impeccable impression of a deer under headlights as he stammered and stumbled upon his words while emphasising that “whoever” killed Al-Arouri was only targeting Hamas and not Hezbollah:
“Obviously in Lebanon, there are many Hezbollah targets, but whoever did this strike was very surgical and went for a Hamas target because Israel is at war… Whoever did this has a gripe with Hamas.
“Whoever did this, it’s not an attack on the Lebanese state. It’s not an attack on the Hezbollah terrorist organisation. Whoever did this, it’s an attack on Hamas, that’s very clear.”
Indeed, it was a clear, albeit shoddy, attempt to limit Hezbollah’s retaliation. More significantly, it revealed the fear of the Lebanese resistance in the Zionist hearts despite all the firepower and bombastic rhetoric they possess.
In his broadcast following Al-Arouri’s killing, Nasrallah reminded the Israelis of his promise from August last year and spoke of the impeding retaliation:
Regarding the incident yesterday: the resistance had promised, even if it was under different circumstances where there was no war or changes in many of the calculations of the struggle, but not a thing has changed in the promise.
The assassination of Sheikh Saleh Al-Arouri is a dangerous crime that will not remain unanswered or unpunished. Between you and us is the [battle]field, the days, and the nights.
The impact of Hezbollah’s operations
A constant barrage of Hezbollah firepower and the consequent near non-stop sounding of sirens has seen settlers in northern Israel flee en masse. With over 200,000 squatters displaced from their stolen homes and currently living on state support in other parts of Israel, the occupied northern Palestine has turned into a veritable ghost town.
Interestingly, a significant number of squatters in the stolen territories have shown no appetite for a return even after the genocidal Israeli war comes to a halt.
According to a May 31 report published in The Cradle:
A new study conducted by the Tel Hai Academic College in Israel states that about 40 percent of the evacuees from the northern settlements are considering not returning to their homes after the end of the war.
There are ominous signs for the Zionist entity, as the report goes on to add:
“The residents of the north have to deal with many difficulties of prolonged hotel stays. They are subject to great uncertainty from a security, political, economic, and social point of view,” notes Dr Ayala Cohen, head of the college's Knowledge Center that conducted the poll.
Further:
“The findings of the survey are difficult and alarming,” adds Dr Cohen, a senior lecturer in the social work department at the college. “They have not been in their natural environment for eight months. Even the residents of the north who were not evacuated testify to a difficult situation and uncertainty. As time goes by, the security situation in the Galilee worsens, and along with it the situation of these residents. The state must urgently establish an administration that will take care of the residents of the north, respond to their needs, and create a clear horizon for their future.”
Frustrated by the apathy of their government, some enterprising squatters went so far as to declare a symbolic secession of Galilee from Israel. The Times of Israel reported on May 10:
Residents of northern Israel will mark Independence Day next week with marches, demonstrations and a symbolic secession from Israel to protest the government’s inability to enable thousands of displaced citizens to return home, officials said.
One organiser of the movement blamed the secessionist movement on the Israeli government:
“We will create a process of disengaging from the irresponsible government that has given up on the most beautiful part of the country in Israel, and we will take action soon.”
With frustration boiling over, the squatters in the Margaliot settlement in Upper Galilee made good on their promise late last month.
“The local authority in Margaliot in the Upper Galilee announces the cessation of communication with the Israeli government. The local authority in Margaliot asks the army to withdraw its forces in protest of the government’s neglect of the residents of the north,” Al Jazeera’s correspondent reported on 27 May.
“The Margaliot settlement has decided to sever contact with the Israeli government and withdraw all soldiers from Margaliot. A notification has been sent to the termination officer. Additionally, we are closing the settlement’s operations center and gates. No one, including the military, will be allowed to enter or leave the settlement. The emergency squad will find another place to stay,” said Eitan Davidi, Chairman of Margaliot settlement.
Interestingly, the squatter in chief at Margaliot laid the blame squarely on the Israeli government for its apathy towards the north as it trained its attention to the urgent business of genocide in Gaza:
“Margaliot does not need protection from Hezbollah but from the Israeli government, which is crushing the settlement with its decisions. Margaliot is directly harmed by the government … decisions, causing more damage than Hezbollah's anti-tank missiles,” he added.
On May 26, the Palestinian resistance had fired a barrage of rockets on Tel Aviv for the first time in four months, leading to much hue and cry in the Zionist administration and the media. Moshe Davidovitz, the head of the Mateh Asher settler council in the Galilee, wasn’t too pleased with the reaction of his fellow squatters in fancier parts of Israel to the Palestinian barrage at the expense of the Israeli north:
“Ten rockets fell in the center of the country, and the media is in an uproar - the country is in turmoil. Every day, dozens of rockets are fired towards the … conflict zone settlements and the Galilee, including anti-tank missiles and suicide drones, and the country remains silent. Once again, it’s proof that the north is not being counted.”
Israel in no mood for reconciliation
Despite the growing anger in the north, the Netanyahu government is in no mood to address the frustration of its fellow chosen beings. On the contrary, it appears to be scaling back some of its security installations that provide security to the squatters.
The Israeli military plans to lessen the number of its troops on the northern border with Lebanon to cut down on spending, according to a 28 May Yedioth Ahronoth report:
The military will look to reduce its presence from 28 to 18 soldiers in settlements 5 km away from the border (a roughly 35% reduction in staffing), while it will deploy only 4 soldiers in settlements 9km away from the border (an 85% reduction).
Many residents of the northern settlements that remain are fearful of the cost-saving measure, with the head of the Upper Galilee Council noting, "These are decisions for which we may pay a heavy price."
A Moody’s report based on data from the Ministry of Finance revealed that the war has cost Israel roughly $269 million daily, bringing the total estimated cost of the war after 235 days to $63.2 billion dollars.
Meanwhile, the carnage caused by the Hezbollah barrage in support of the Palestinian resistance down south has made a massive dent on the settler infrastructure up north.
Hebrew Channel 12 reported:
According to the Israeli Ministry of War, 930 buildings were damaged by the war in 86 settlements in the Upper and Western Galilee (near the border with Lebanon), including homes, public buildings, and infrastructure.
318 were classified as “serious damage.”
A number of officials in the ministry estimate that in the settlements that have suffered the greatest damage, settlers will not be able to return to their homes until at least year after the fighting stops.
As mentioned earlier, nearly half the settlers are in no mood to return to their stolen homes even after the end of the fighting.
When does it end?
Just like the Yemeni resistance, Hezbollah’s operations in northern Israel began in response to the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Nasrallah has been explicit in his declaration that the opening of the northern front is his bid to stretch Israeli resources.
Nasrallah has vowed to continue attacking the Israelis for as long as they keep up with their barbarism in the Gaza concentration camp. The solution that the Lebanese resistance has proposed to the Israelis is remarkably simple: stop the genocide.
But the Israelis appear in no mood to do so. And they certainly have the American backing if they wish to escalate the ongoing skirmish into an all-out war.
Amos Hochstein, the American envoy in Lebanon, when he visited the country in March, spoke in the typical threatening Israeli tone, saying that “a truce in Gaza will not necessarily automatically extend to Lebanon.”
Moreover, one Lebanese outlet reported on Hochstein’s pro-Israel advocacy even as his trip to Lebanon came in his role as an American envoy to the region:
“He warned that if political guarantees were not offered that Hezbollah would stop its military operations in the future, the truce in Gaza would change nothing for Lebanon,” said a source familiar with the discussions on condition of anonymity, due to the sensitivity of the issue.
“[Hochstein] added that even if the truce in Gaza concerns Lebanon as well, this does not mean that we can return to the pre-war situation,” the source continued.
“The tone was quite threatening against a war that would be very harsh if unleashed, and the message quite clear: a halt to the war in South Lebanon has become linked to a change in the situation concerning the presence of Hezbollah south of the Litani River.”
Not much has changed since Hochstein’s March comments. He remains ambiguous as to what a peace deal would look like for the Lebanese.
This is typical Israeli-American behaviour when dealing with non-allied states. Their interests dominate over their enemies’. Fair dealing is never on the table. For as long as that remains the case, it is hard to see Hezbollah packing in its weapons anytime soon.
As things stand, an all-out war looks more likely than a ceasefire in Israel’s north.
The great Israeli unravelling
Long before the the Al Aqsa Flood operation of the Palestinian resistance, the Israeli society was teetering on the brink. There were regular protest marches against attempted power grab by the executive at the expense of the judiciary and a prime minister embroiled in corruption allegations that could land him in jail. The Israelis couldn’t even agree on a mandate government with five elections in just over three years between 2019 and 2022.
Events since October 7 have only brought the internal divisions into a sharper light. There have been near daily demonstrations in Tel Aviv by the families of the prisoners of war captured by the Palestinian resistance, demanding the release of their loved ones. They have been eager for a prisoner exchange deal, but to no avail. The Netanyahu regime remains steadfast in its attempt to ethnically cleanse Gaza once and for all, even at the expense of the captured Israelis.
There have been brutal scenes of crackdowns on protesters by the authorities in Tel Aviv. There have even been instances of pro-genocide counter-protestors beating and running over those agitating for prisoner exchange negotiations.
Moreover, there has been an ever increasing flight of settlers to various parts of their former countries in North America and Europe, vowing to never return. All these developments point to deep divisions within the Israeli society.
In this milieu, the Israeli government would want nothing more than pushing Hezbollah north of the Litani River in Lebanon. It’s a dream that they have held for decades.
Back in 1982, when the Israelis began their barbaric campaign in southern Lebanon — triggering events that would give birth to Hezbollah — American Professor Eqbal Ahmad pointed this out along with the other fervent Israeli desire to turn northern Lebanon into its protectorate:
“From every evidence that one sees of Israel wants from Lebanon from January 10th 1919, which witnessed the publication of the first well-worked out map of the Zionist movement, one knows that the Israelis would like optimally to actually hold the territory to extend it to Eretz Israel up to the Litani River. Beyond the Litani River they would like essentially what has been known in imperial history in simple words as a protectorate.”
But the Israelis couldn’t be further from their pipe dream.
In one of his broadcasts back in February, Nasrallah joked that there were talks among foreign diplomats in Beirut about pushing Hezbollah north of the Litani; however, the assessment of their Lebanese counterparts pointed to a more likely prospect of the Litani moving southward into Israel than Hezbollah going north of the river.
Back in 2000, Nasrallah had declared Israel to be weaker than a spider’s web. The astonishing success of the Palestinian resistance in its Al Aqsa Flood operation and the subsequent support to the Palestinians by the resistance factions in Yemen and Iraq, and most importantly, from Hezbollah in Lebanon, are pushing the criminal Israelis into an ever deepening quagmire. Events over the last eight months have proven Nasrallah’s assessment from 24 years ago to be correct.
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Israel understands nothing but force. A beserk, out of control rogue state that the bloody Biden admin refuses to curb and instead eggs on w/ more weapons and funding, while mouthing empty ceasefire rhetoric. Gulf Arab states must step up -- they could stop this. US won't.
It's impossible for me to express the profound reverence with which Nasrallah is held by the people not only of Lebanon, but throughout West Asia. I know this through my contacts there. A man for the ages.