Hezbollah’s tunnels and flexible command weather Israel’s deadly blows

Hezbollah’s tunnels and flexible command weather Israel’s deadly blows
A picture taken on June 3, 2019 during a guided tour with the Israeli army shows the interior of a tunnel at the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon in northern Israel. Hezbollah has reportedly built an extensive tunnel network with help from Iran and North Korea. (AFP)
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Updated 26 September 2024
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Hezbollah’s tunnels and flexible command weather Israel’s deadly blows

Hezbollah’s tunnels and flexible command weather Israel’s deadly blows
  • Iran and North Korea helped build tunnels storing missiles, report says
  • Hezbollah fixed line telephone network functional, sources say

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM: Hezbollah’s flexible chain of command, together with its extensive tunnel network and a vast arsenal of missiles and weapons it has bolstered over the past year, is helping it weather unprecedented Israeli strikes, three sources familiar with the Lebanese militant group’s operations said. Israel’s assault on Hezbollah over the past week, including the targeting of senior commanders and the detonation of booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies, has left the powerful Lebanese Shiite militant group and political party reeling.
On Friday, Israel killed the commander who founded and led the group’s elite Radwan force, Ibrahim Aqil. And since Monday, Lebanon’s deadliest day of violence in decades, the health ministry says more than 560 people, among them 50 children, have died in air barrages.
The Israeli military chief of staff Herzi Halevi said on Sunday that Aqil’s death had shaken the organization. Israel says its strikes have also destroyed thousands of Hezbollah rockets and shells.
But two of the sources familiar with Hezbollah operations said the group swiftly appointed replacements for Aqil and other senior figures killed in Friday’s airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in an Aug. 1 speech that the group quickly fills gaps whenever a leader is killed.
A fourth source, a Hezbollah official, said the attack on communication devices put 1,500 fighters out of commission because of their injuries, with many having been blinded or had their hands blown off.
While that is a major blow, it represents a fraction of Hezbollah’s strength, which a report for the US Congress on Friday put at 40,000-50,000 fighters. Nasrallah has said the group has 100,000 fighters.
Since October, when Hezbollah began firing at Israel in October in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza, it has redeployed fighters to frontline areas in the south, including some from Syria, the three sources said.

 

It has also been bringing rockets into Lebanon at a fast pace, anticipating a drawn-out conflict, the sources said, adding that the group sought to avoid all out war. Hezbollah’s main supporter and weapons supplier is Iran. The group is the most powerful faction in Tehran’s “Axis of Resistance” of allied irregular forces across the Middle East. Many of its weapons are Iranian, Russian or Chinese models.
The sources, who all asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, did not provide details of the weapons or where they were bought.
Hezbollah’s media office did not reply to requests for comment for this story.
Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King’s College London, said that while Hezbollah operations had been disrupted by the past week’s attacks, the group’s networked organizational structure helped make it an extremely resilient force.
“This is the most formidable enemy Israel has ever faced on the battlefield, not because of numbers and tech but in terms of resilience.”

Powerful missiles

Fighting has escalated this week. Israel killed another top Hezbollah commander, Ibrahim Qubaisi, on Tuesday. For its part, Hezbollah has shown its capacity to continue operations, firing hundreds of rockets toward Israel in ever deeper attacks. On Wednesday, Hezbollah said it had targeted an Israeli intelligence base near Tel Aviv, more than 100 km (60 miles) from the border. Warning sirens sounded in Tel Aviv as a single surface-to-surface missile was intercepted by air defense systems, the Israeli military said.

The group has yet to say whether it has launched any of its most potent, precision-guided rockets, such as the Fateh-110, an Iranian-made ballistic missile with a range of 250-300 km (341.75 miles). Hezbollah’s Fateh-110 have a 450-500 kg warhead, according to a 2018 paper published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Hezbollah’s rocket attacks are possible because the chain of command has kept functioning despite the group suffering a brief spell of disarray after the pagers and radios detonated, one of the sources, a senior security official, said. The three sources said Hezbollah’s ability to communicate is underpinned by a dedicated, fixed-line telephone network — which it has described as critical to its communications and continues to work — as well as by other devices.
Many of its fighters were carrying older models of pagers, for example, that were unaffected by last week’s attack.
Reuters could not independently verify the information. Most injuries from the exploding pagers were in Beirut, far from the front. Hezbollah stepped up the use of pagers after banning its fighters from using cellphones on the battlefield in February, in response to commanders being killed in strikes.
If the chain of command breaks, frontline fighters are trained to operate in small, independent clusters comprised of a few villages near the border, capable of fighting Israeli forces for long periods, the senior source added.
That is precisely what happened in 2006, during the last war between Hezbollah and Israel, when the group’s fighters held out for weeks, some in frontline villages invaded by Israel.
Israel says it has escalated attacks to degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities and make it safe for tens of thousands of displaced Israelis to return to their homes near the Lebanon border, which they fled when Hezbollah began firing rockets on Oct. 8.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has said it prefers to reach a negotiated agreement that would see Hezbollah withdraw from the border region but stands ready to continue its bombing campaign if Hezbollah refuses, and does not rule out any military options. Hezbollah’s resilience means the fighting has raised fears of a protracted war that could suck in the US, Israel’s close ally, and Iran — especially if Israel launches, and gets bogged down in, a ground offensive in southern Lebanon.
Israel’s military did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian warned on Monday of “irreversible” consequences of a full blown war in the Middle East. A US State Department official said Washington disagreed with Israel’s strategy of escalation and sought to reduce tensions.

Underground arsenal
In what two of the sources said was an indication of how well some of Hezbollah’s weapons are hidden, on Sunday rockets were launched from areas of southern Lebanon that had been targeted by Israel shortly before, the two sources said. Hezbollah is believed to have an underground arsenal and last month published footage that appeared to show its fighters driving trucks with rocket launchers through tunnels. The sources did not specify if the rockets fired on Sunday were launched from underground.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Monday’s barrage had destroyed tens of thousands of Hezbollah rockets and munitions.
Israel’s military said long-range cruise missiles, rockets with warheads capable of carrying 100kg of explosives, short-range rockets, and explosive UAVs were all struck on Monday.
Reuters could not independently verify the military claims.
Boaz Shapira a researcher at Alma, an Israeli think tank that specializes in Hezbollah, said Israel had yet to target strategic sites such as long-range missiles and drone sites.
“I don’t think we are anywhere near finishing this,” Shapira said.
Hezbollah’s arsenal is believed to comprise some 150,000 rockets, the US Congress report said. Krieg said its most powerful, long-range ballistic missiles were kept below ground. Hezbollah has spent years building a tunnel network that by Israeli estimates extends for hundreds of kilometers. The Israeli military said Monday’s air strikes hit Hezbollah missile launch sites hidden under homes in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah has said it does not place military infrastructure near civilians. Hezbollah has issued no statement on the impact of Israel’s strikes since Monday.

Tunnels
The group’s arsenal and tunnels have expanded since the 2006 war, especially precision guidance systems, leader Nasrallah has said. Hezbollah officials have said the group has used a small part of the arsenal in fighting over the past year. Israeli officials have said Hezbollah’s military infrastructure is tightly meshed into the villages and communities of southern Lebanon, with ammunition and missile launcher pads stored in houses throughout the area. Israel has been pounding some of those villages for months to degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities.
Confirmed details on the tunnel network remain scarce.
A 2021 report by Alma, an Israeli think tank that specializes in Hezbollah, said Iran and North Korea both helped build up the network of tunnels in the aftermath of the 2006 war.
Israel has already struggled to root out Hamas commanders and self-reliant fighting units from the tunnels criss-crossing Gaza.
“It is one of our biggest challenges in Gaza, and it is certainly something we could meet in Lebanon,” said Carmit Valensi, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, a think-tank.
Krieg said that unlike Gaza, where most tunnels are manually dug into a sandy soil, the tunnels in Lebanon had been dug deep in mountain rock. “They are far less accessible than in Gaza and even less easy to destroy.”


Qatar demands IAEA oversight of Israel’s nuclear facilities

Qatar demands IAEA oversight of Israel’s nuclear facilities
Updated 09 March 2025
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Qatar demands IAEA oversight of Israel’s nuclear facilities

Qatar demands IAEA oversight of Israel’s nuclear facilities

DUBAI: Qatar on Saturday called for international efforts to bring all Israel’s nuclear facilities under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The foreign ministry of Qatar, in a statement, called on Israel “to subject all its nuclear facilities to IAEA safeguards” and for Israel to join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. 

The statement followed a meeting of IAEA governors in Vienna attended by Jassim Yacoub Al-Hammadi, Qatar’s ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations in Vienna. The meeting addressed “the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel’s nuclear capabilities.”

Al-Hammadi noted during the meeting that “some of these resolutions explicitly urged Israel to join the NPT as a non-nuclear state.”

He also pointed out that “all Middle Eastern countries, except Israel, are parties to the NPT and have effective safeguard agreements with the agency.”

He further noted that Israel continues its aggressive policies, such as calls for a forced displacement of the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, and its intensifying military operations in the West Bank, as well as the “obstruction of humanitarian aid to Gaza and continued restrictions on UNRWA’s operations.”

Qatar is a mediator for Gaza ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas.


Israel to send team to Doha as Hamas pushes for phase two of Gaza truce

Israel to send team to Doha as Hamas pushes for phase two of Gaza truce
Updated 46 min 41 sec ago
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Israel to send team to Doha as Hamas pushes for phase two of Gaza truce

Israel to send team to Doha as Hamas pushes for phase two of Gaza truce
  • Hamas says held several meetings with US over Gaza ceasefire deal
  • Israel to send delegation to Doha on Monday for ceasefire talks

PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES: Hamas reiterated on Sunday its insistence on moving directly into negotiating a second phase of the Gaza truce, as Israel announced it would dispatch a delegation to Doha for further talks.
Representatives of the Palestinian militant group met with mediators in Cairo at the weekend, emphasising the need for humanitarian aid to re-enter the besieged territory “without restrictions or conditions,” according to a Hamas press release.
The high-level delegation also stressed the need for “moving directly to begin negotiations for the second phase” of the deal, which will aim to lay the groundwork for a permanent ceasefire.
Hamas’s demands for the second phase include a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, an end to the blockade, the reconstruction of the territory and financial support, an official told AFP.
Hamas spokesperson Abdel Latif Al-Qanoua said indicators were so far “positive.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office meanwhile said it would send delegates to Doha on Monday.
Israel has maintained it wants an extension of the truce’s first phase until mid-April.
That initial period ended on March 1 after six weeks of relative calm that included the exchange of 25 living hostages and eight bodies for the release of about 1,800 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.
The truce largely halted more than 15 months of fighting in Gaza, where virtually the entire population was displaced by Israel’s relentless military campaign in response to Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.
It also enabled the flow of vital food, shelter and medical assistance into Gaza.
After Israel turned the pipeline off again, UN rights experts accused the government of “weaponizing starvation.”
Displaced Palestinian widow Haneen Al-Dura told AFP she and her children spent a month and a half living on the street “among dogs and rats” before receiving a tent.
“As the family’s provider, it was distressing and I couldn’t sleep at all during the night,” she said.

US direct talks with Hamas   

Meetings between Hamas leaders and US hostage negotiator Adam Boehler in recent days have focused on the release of an American-Israeli dual national being held by the militant group in Gaza, a senior Hamas official told Reuters on Sunday.
Taher Al-Nono, political adviser to the leader of the Palestinian group, confirmed the unprecedented, direct talks with Washington, saying the discussions had taken place in the Qatari capital over the past week.
“Several meetings have already taken place in Doha, focusing on releasing one of the dual-nationality prisoners. We have dealt positively and flexibly, in a way that serves the interests of the Palestinian people,” Nono said.
He added that the two sides had also discussed how to see through the implementation of the phased agreement aimed at ending the Israel-Hamas war.
“We informed the American delegation that we don’t oppose the release of the prisoner within the framework of these talks,” Nono told Reuters.

Last week, US President Donald Trump threatened further destruction of Gaza if all remaining hostages are not released, issuing what he called a “last warning” to Hamas leaders.
He also warned of repercussions for all Gazans, telling them: “A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD!“
Hamas said Trump’s threats would only encourage Israel to ignore the terms of their truce.
Of the 251 hostages taken by the Palestinian militants, 58 remain in Gaza, including five Americans. Four American captives have been confirmed dead, while one, Edan Alexander, is believed to be alive.
The White House said Trump met with eight of the freed captives, who “expressed gratitude” for his efforts to bring them home.

The US president previously floated a widely condemned plan to relocate Palestinians from Gaza, prompting Arab leaders to offer an alternative. Their proposal would see Gaza’s reconstruction financed through a trust fund, with the Palestinian Authority returning to govern the territory.
“We need more discussion about it, but it’s a good-faith first step,” Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy, told reporters in Washington in response to the plan.
Witkoff will be returning to the region this week as he travels to Saudi Arabia for talks on the war in Ukraine.
At their regular weekend rally in Tel Aviv, families of Israeli hostages demanded the government fully implement the ceasefire.
“The war could resume in a week — they have even picked a name for the operation,” Einav Zangauker, the mother of Matan Zangauker, told the candle and poster-wielding crowd.
“The war won’t bring the hostages back home, it will kill them.”
Recently released hostages have also joined those beseeching Netanyahu to implement the ceasefire.
Hamas’s attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,446 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN considers these figures reliable.

 


Syria’s Sharaa pleas for communal peace as clashes continue

Syria’s Sharaa pleas for communal peace as clashes continue
Updated 09 March 2025
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Syria’s Sharaa pleas for communal peace as clashes continue

Syria’s Sharaa pleas for communal peace as clashes continue
  • Syrian security sources said at least two hundred of their members were killed in the clashes with former army personnel owing allegiance to Assad
  • Two days of fighting in the Mediterranean coastal region amounted to some of the worst violence for years in a 13-year-old civil conflict.

CAIRO: Syrian leader Ahmed Sharaa called for peace on Sunday after hundreds were killed in coastal areas in the worst communal violence since the fall of Bashar al Assad.
“We have to preserve national unity and domestic peace, we can live together,” Sharaa, the interim president, said as clashes continued between forces linked to the new Islamist rulers and fighters from Assad’s Alawite sect.
“Rest assured about Syria, this country has the characteristics for survival,” Sharaa said in a circulated video, speaking at a mosque in his childhood neighborhood of Mazzah in Damascus. “What is currently happening in Syria is within the expected challenges.”
Syrian security sources said at least two hundred of their members were killed in the clashes with former army personnel owing allegiance to Assad after coordinated attacks and ambushes on their forces that were waged on Thursday.
The attacks spiralled into revenge killings when thousands of armed supporters of Syria’s new leaders from across the country descended to the coastal areas to support beleaguered forces of the new administration
The authorities blamed summary executions of dozens of youths and deadly raids on homes in villages and towns inhabited by Syria’s once ruling minority on unruly armed militias who came to help the security forces and have long blamed Assad’s supporters for past crimes.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, said on Saturday the two days of fighting in the Mediterranean coastal region amounted to some of the worst violence for years in a 13-year-old civil conflict.
Clashes continued overnight in several towns where armed groups fired on security forces and ambushed cars on highways leading to main towns in the coastal area, a Syrian security source told Reuters on Sunday.


France, Germany, Italy, Britain back Arab plan for Gaza reconstruction

France, Germany, Italy, Britain back Arab plan for Gaza reconstruction
Updated 09 March 2025
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France, Germany, Italy, Britain back Arab plan for Gaza reconstruction

France, Germany, Italy, Britain back Arab plan for Gaza reconstruction
  • Plan calls for reconstruction of Gaza for $53 billion, avoids displacing Palestinians 
  • Drawn up by Egypt, plan has been rejected by Israel and US President Donald Trump

ROME: The foreign ministers of France, Germany, Italy and Britain said on Saturday they supported an Arab-backed plan for the reconstruction of Gaza that would cost $53 billion and avoid displacing Palestinians from the enclave.
“The plan shows a realistic path to the reconstruction of Gaza and promises – if implemented – swift and sustainable improvement of the catastrophic living conditions for the Palestinians living in Gaza,” the ministers said in a joint statement.
The plan, which was drawn up by Egypt and adopted by Arab leaders on Tuesday, has been rejected by Israel and by US President Donald Trump, who has presented his own vision to turn the Gaza Strip into a “Middle East Riviera.”

Opinion

This section contains relevant reference points, placed in (Opinion field)


The Egyptian proposal envisages the creation of an administrative committee of independent, professional Palestinian technocrats entrusted with the governance of Gaza after the end of the war in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
The committee would be responsible for the oversight of humanitarian aid and managing the Strip’s affairs for a temporary period under the supervision of the Palestinian Authority.
The statement issued by the four European countries on Saturday said they were “committed to working with the Arab initiative,” and they appreciated the “important signal” the Arab states had sent by developing it.
The statement said Hamas “must neither govern Gaza nor be a threat to Israel any more” and that the four countries “support the central role for the Palestinian Authority and the implementation of its reform agenda.” 


The major security challenges facing Syria’s new rulers

The major security challenges facing Syria’s new rulers
Updated 09 March 2025
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The major security challenges facing Syria’s new rulers

The major security challenges facing Syria’s new rulers
  • The region has been gripped by fears of reprisals against Alawites for the family’s brutal rule, which included widespread torture and disappearances
  • Sharaa has demanded that all groups give up their arms and be integrated into Syria’s new army, and has rejected autonomy for the Kurds

BEIRUT, Lebanon: Syria’s transitional authorities face a daunting task maintaining security in the ethnically and religiously diverse country, with challenges erupting across its territory to security forces still dominated by former Islamist rebels.
With heavy clashes taking place in the Alawite-dominated coast, ongoing negotiations with the Kurds in the northeast, and tensions swirling around the Druze and Israeli intervention in the south, the challenges for the fledgling government are piling up.

The worst violence since the December overthrow of Bashar Assad erupted on Syria’s Mediterranean coast this week, following clashes between the new authorities and forces loyal to the toppled government.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 500 people, including 311 Alawite civilians, have been killed.
The region is a bastion of the Alawite minority, to which Assad and his family belong.
The religious minority makes up around nine percent of the Syrian population, but was heavily represented in military and security institutions during the Assads’ five-decade rule.
The region has been gripped by fears of reprisals against Alawites for the family’s brutal rule, which included widespread torture and disappearances.
Aron Lund of the Century International think tank said the violence was “a bad omen.”
The new government, led by interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, lacks the tools, incentives and local base of support to engage with disgruntled Alawites, he said.
“All they have is repressive power, and a lot of that... is made up of jihadist zealots who think Alawites are enemies of God.”
When anti-government forces launch attacks, “these groups go roaming the Alawite villages, but those villages are full of vulnerable civilians,” he added.
Since coming to power, Sharaa has emphasized that his government would respect minorities, but those “talking points do not seem to have filtered out far into the ex-rebel factions that are now supposed to function as Syria’s army and police,” Lund said.

Much of Syria’s north and northeast is controlled by a semi-autonomous Kurdish administration whose armed groups have retained their weapons.
Sharaa has demanded that all groups give up their arms and be integrated into Syria’s new army, and has rejected autonomy for the Kurds.
Negotiations between the two sides have so far yielded no agreement, while pro-Turkiye factions have clashed with Kurdish forces since November.
The Kurdish-dominated, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) played a key role in rolling back the territorial conquests of the Daesh group, allowing the Kurds to take control of vast areas, including many of Syria’s oil fields.
“As long as US troops remain in the northeast, the SDF will not disband,” political analyst Fabrice Balanche told AFP, referring to a contingent of soldiers deployed in Syria by Washington to counter the Islamic State.
“The Kurds would accept the return of Syria’s civil administration — health services, education... but not the military forces of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham,” he added, referring to Sharaa’s Islamist militant group that led the overthrow of Assad.
“They want to maintain their autonomy in governance,” he added.
“The Arabs, who represent 60 percent of the population of the territories under Kurdish administration, are reportedly growing increasingly resistant to SDF authority since Sharaa came to power,” Balanche said.

The Druze, who practice an offshoot of Shiite Islam, account for three percent of the Syrian population and are heavily concentrated in the southern province of Sweida.
Having largely remained on the sidelines of Syria’s civil war, Druze forces focused on defending their territory against attack and largely avoided conscription into the Syrian armed forces.
Two important Druze armed groups recently expressed their willingness to join a unified national army but are yet to hand over their weapons.
Syria’s powerful neighbor Israel has sought to involve itself in the area, in particular after clashes in the mostly Druze and Christian Damascus suburb of Jaramana.
Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, warned Syria not “to harm the Druze,” who also live in Lebanon, Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demanded that southern Syria be completely demilitarised, while Israeli forces have repeatedly bombed Syria and moved into a UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights.
Druze leaders immediately rejected Katz’s warning and declared their loyalty to a united Syria. Sharaa also attacked the statement and called for Israel to withdraw from Syrian territory.
Charles Lister, a Syria expert at the Middle East Institute, said on X that, so far, Israel’s efforts had “pushed the Druze closer to Damascus.”