Hezbollah
Update 2024-08-25
2024-08-22 IDF launches ‘extensive’ strikes against Hezbollah in 10 areas of southern Lebanon he IDF said Thursday that it carried out “extensive” airstrikes against Hezbollah terror group sites in southern Lebanon overnight, as the spiraling violence between the two sides showed no sign of losing momentum.
Attacks carried out by fighter jets targeted weapon depots, buildings used by Hezbollah and a rocket launcher, in 10 areas of southern Lebanon, according to an update from the military. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/idf-launches-extensive-strikes-against-hezbollah-in-10-areas-of-southern-lebanon/ar-AA1pezIh?
2024-08-21 Israel kills top Palestinian militant as Gaza truce talks stumble The Israeli military killed a senior Palestinian militant in Lebanon on Wednesday, leading to accusations from the Fatah movement that Israel was trying to ignite a regional war.
The strike that killed Khalil Maqdah, described by Fatah as “one of the leaders” of its armed wing in Lebanon, came hours after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken ended a tour of the Middle East aimed at reaching a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-kills-top-palestinian-militant-as-gaza-truce-talks-stumble/ar-AA1paDzv?
2024-08-17 How Israel Killed a Ghost BEIRUT—Fuad Shukr had eluded the U.S. for four decades, ever since a bombing killed 241 American servicemen in a Marine barracks in the Lebanese capital, which it says he helped plan. At the end of July, an Israeli airstrike found him on the seventh floor of a residential building not far away.
The militant was one of the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hezbollah’s founders and most senior operatives, a longtime trusted friend of the leader Hassan Nasrallah who played a key role in developing the missile arsenal that has made Hezbollah the world’s best-armed nonstate militia. For the past 10 months, he had commanded the group’s increasingly intense cross-border skirmishing with Israel.
Yet despite being one of the most important figures in Hezbollah’s history, he lived an almost invisible life, appearing only in small gatherings of the group’s trusted veterans. He emerged in public early this year to attend the funeral of a nephew killed fighting Israel—but only for a couple of minutes, an acquaintance said. Shukr was so secretive that Lebanese media outlets reporting on his death published photos of the wrong man. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/how-israel-killed-a-ghost/ar-AA1oZ0OT?
2024-08-13 Middle East Braces as Iran & Hezbollah Vow Retaliation for Israeli Assassinations Iran has rejected a call by France, Germany and the United Kingdom demanding it refrain from any retaliatory attacks over the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31. Tensions also remain high on Israel’s northern border as Lebanon-based Hezbollah vows to respond to the Israeli assassination of its senior military commander Fuad Shukr. On Friday, Israel continued its assassination campaign by killing a Hamas commander in the Lebanese city of Sidon. “It’s a very, very tense time here in Beirut, and in Lebanon more generally,” says Karim Makdisi, a professor of international politics at the American University of Beirut. He says the cycle of escalation across the region has a clear cause, which is Israel’s war on Gaza backed by the United States, and that ending the violence there will bring calm elsewhere. “Get a ceasefire, everything stops.” Democracy Now! is an independent global news hourhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrzAkEUwils
2024-06-24 War Between Israel and Hezbollah Appears Increasingly Likely Then finally we assess the increasing chances that a war will soon break out between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon and speak with Thanassis Cambanis, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and Director of the Center for International Research and Policy. Until recently, he was worked as a journalist based in Lebanon and his books include A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel, Once Upon a Revolution: An Egyptian Story, and most recently, Shia Power Comes of Age: The Transformation of Islamist Politics in Iraq, 2003-2023. https://www.backgroundbriefing.org/2024/06/25/background-briefing-june-25-2024/
2024-06-23 Hezbollah releases more drone footage of Israeli sites, claims attack on barracks Hezbollah claims to have waged an aerial assault on a military site near the border, killing and injuring Israeli soldiers. In a statement, the group said it targeted Israel’s Sahel Battalion in the Beit Hilal barracks, achieving a direct hit. There was no immediate comment from Israel’s military. The announcement came hours after Hezbollah released a new video purporting to display sensitive Israel sites along with their coordinates, as fears grow of an all-out war between the two sides.
The video is overlaid with a speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, in which he says, “If war is imposed on Lebanon, the resistance will fight without restrictions or rules.” Al Jazeera’s Assed Baig reports from Rmaych in southern Lebanon. Sultan Barakat is a professor of public policy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. He joins from York in the UK to discuss the latest updates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tP6CM5puEY
2024-06-19 Are Israel and Hezbollah on the verge of a full-blown war? | Inside Story Tensions between the Israeli military and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah are at an all-time high. They’ve been engaged in low-level hostilities for more than eight months. The assassination of one of Hezbollah’s most senior commanders last week, however, saw an unprecedented response. US President Joe Biden sent a special envoy to the region, hoping to defuse tensions and prevent a wider conflict. But has it worked? And with no sign the Israeli military is close to ending its war on Gaza in the south, is it on the brink of opening up a second front in the north?
Presenter: Neave Barker Guests:
Nicholas Noe — Editor-in-Chief of the Beirut-based Mideastwire.com
Robert Geist Pinfold — Lecturer in Peace and Security at Durham University
Mohanad Hage Ali — Deputy Research Director at the Malcolm H Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5017EsGx72E
2024-03-08 Israel’s Hezbollah problem could outlast its war in Gaza When Israel’s war on Hamas ends, its conflict with Iran-backed militias may rage on. Israeli officials are increasingly concerned with the constant artillery and rocket fire at the northern border with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants and have said they will fight to push the group back from bordering territory.
While the risk of all-out war is not imminent, the clash with Hezbollah is driving up the long-term stakes in the Middle East. Israel wants to eventually return its residents to the north, and it can’t do that with Iran-backed militants posing a constant threat near the border. Hezbollah is unlikely to agree to any hard concessions, setting up an impasse for diplomatic solutions — and fertile ground for military provocations.
“We’re inching closer to a war. So far, the two parties have been careful not to do something that would unravel everything and lead to an all-out war,” said Asher Kaufman, a professor and Middle East expert at the University of Notre Dame. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-s-hezbollah-problem-could-outlast-its-war-in-gaza/ar-BB1jybNH?
2024-02-26 Gallant: Israel will increase strikes on Hezbollah even during potential Gaza truce Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel would increase its strikes on Hezbollah in response to its daily attacks on northern Israel, including amid a potential temporary ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. “We are planning to increase the firepower against Hezbollah, which is unable to find replacements for the commanders we are eliminating,” Gallant said Sunday during a visit to the IDF Northern Command headquarters in Safed.
The defense minister emphasized that strikes on Hezbollah would continue even if Israel signed a hostage deal with Hamas, which would see a pause in fighting in Gaza and the release of Palestinian prisoners in return for freeing the hostages held in the Strip. https://www.timesofisrael.com/gallant-israel-will-increase-strikes-on-hezbollah-even-during-potential-gaza-truce/
2024-01-09 Hezbollah launches drone attack on northern Israel Hezbollah says its forces hit a military command headquarters in the city of Safed in northern Israel. The armed group says the attacks are in response to the assassination of its senior members and Hamas’ second in command Saleh al-Arouri. We have correspondents on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border. Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodris in Tyre, in southern Lebanon and Laura Khan is standing by in Shlomi, in northern Israel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d9nUjfJvDY
2024-01-08 BREAKING: HEZBOLLAH STRIKES IDF BASE; IDF CENSORS CNN; BRUTAL TORTURE EXPOSED https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfaa14yN31A
2024-01-08 Israeli strike kills Hezbollah commander -sources Israel killed a top Hezbollah commander in a strike in south Lebanon on Monday, sources familiar with the group’s operations said, inflicting a heavy blow after three months of hostilities at the Lebanese-Israeli frontier. Zachary Goelman produced this report. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israeli-strike-kills-hezbollah-commander-sources/vi-AA1mEu2A?
2023-12-20 Israel strikes southern Lebanon; Hezbollah announces fatalities Israel has launched air strikes on several positions in southern Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah. The Lebanese armed group says six fighters were killed in the past 24 hours. Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr is in Southern Lebanon for the latest updates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiJXscT-vWU
2023-12-20 Hezbollah pays growing price in Mideast conflict Hezbollah is paying a growing price in weeks of hostilities with Israel that have killed more than 100 of its fighters, but does not foresee all-out war even as the toll increases and the conflict grinds on, sources familiar with its thinking say. Hezbollah has been trading fire with Israel at the border since its Palestinian ally Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, igniting a conflict that has drawn in the heavily armed group and other Iran-aligned factions across the Middle East.
But the violence has largely been contained to areas at the border, shaped by what observers have called unwritten rules of engagement between adversaries that have long threatened each other with catastrophic damage in the event of war. Speaking at a funeral in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, Hezbollah official Sheikh Yousef Srour said the group had taken “an oath to support the Gaza front” to the end and to reduce the pressure on it “as much as possible”. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/hezbollah-pays-growing-price-in-mideast-conflict/ar-AA1lO2sf
2023-12-11 Displacement, Disease and Death Plague Gazans as Israel Continues Its Genocidal Assault Meanwhile, a U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon is warning the likelihood of a “wider conflict” is increasing amid escalating cross-border violence between Israel and Hezbollah.
The mass displacement and war on the besieged territory has led to a public health disaster. The U.N.’s World Food Programme warns half of Gaza’s population of over 2 million people is starving and that nine out of 10 people are not able to eat every day. As clean water becomes more scarce, diarrhea, skin infections, acute viral hepatitis, scabies and measles are multiplying. Earlier today, the World Health Organization passed a resolution calling for immediate humanitarian aid access and an end to fighting in Gaza. In the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, usually busy streets and commercial areas are empty today in observance of a general strike for Gaza. Global actions are also taking place today, including marches and calls to refrain from buying anything. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/11/headlines/displacement_disease_and_death_plague_gazans_as_israel_continues_its_genocidal_assault
2023-12-09 Israeli strike kills son of Hezbollah’s Golan border terror chief – report The son of the head of Hezbollah’s terrorist operations near the Syrian-Israeli border was eliminated in an alleged Israeli drone strike in western Syria on Friday, according to Syrian reports. On Friday afternoon, Syrian media reported that four people were killed in an alleged Israeli airstrike targeting a vehicle in Madinat al-Baath in the Quneit.
A few hours later, Hezbollah announced that three of its members, Ali Idris Salman “Abbas,” Hussein Issam Taha “Abu Turab,” and Hassan Ali Daqduq “Jawad” were killed “on the road to Jerusalem,” although the announcement did not say where or in what circumstances.
The Syrian Capital Voice news site reported that the three were killed in the drone strike in western Syria alongside Muhammad Anas al-Tamer, one of the commanders of the Arab Nationalist Guard, a pan-Arab militia aligned with the Assad regime. Tamer was one of the founders of the Arab Nationalist Guard, but had since become a central part of Hezbollah’s Golan File (Unit 142), according to the Syrian Ain al-Sham news account.
A little less than a week ago, two members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed in alleged Israeli airstrikes which targeted sites near Damascus early Saturday morning, according to the IRGC.
The two were identified as Mohammad Ali Ataee Shoorche and Panah Taqizadeh, with the IRGC saying they were carrying out an “advisory mission” in Syria. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israeli-drone-kills-son-of-hezbollah-s-golan-heights-terror-chief/ar-AA1lePXF?
2023-11-04 AS’AD AbuKHALIL: Nasrallah & the Future of the War The Hezbollah leader all but made it clear that a larger war is inevitable but he did not want to be the one to announce it. Since the Lebanese economic collapse in 2019, Hezbollah has pursued political options focusing on solidifying Shiite political ranks. This is only understandable from the perspective of the party protecting itself from a Gulf-Israel plot to instigate a Shiite, intra-sectarian, civil war.
Thus it’s not easy to assess the speech with disregard to the political context in which it took place. Nasrallah was addressing many audiences: the party’s rank-and-file, the Lebanese scene, the Arab scene, and his enemies in the West and Israel.
Hezbollah is the first Arab political party, or even state if we add them to the mix, which devotes energy and resources to engage in psychological warfare against the Israelis. The PLO had no notion of that, and the speeches of its leaders (and of Arab leaders) were bombastic and emotional and did not rely on a base of military power and preparedness. https://consortiumnews.com/2023/11/04/asad-abukhalil-nasrallah-the-future-of-the-war/
2023-10-25 Craig Murray: The Chances of a Regional War Gaza has no defense from bombs and missiles, and there is no military reason why Israel cannot keep this up for months and simply rely upon aerial massacre. We are perhaps within a week of thirst, starvation and disease killing even more people per day than bombardment. The population of Gaza is simply defenseless. Only international intervention can stop Israel from doing whatever it wishes, and those countries which have influence with Israel are actively abetting and encouraging the genocide.
I do not see any salvation for Gaza coming from Hezbollah. If Hezbollah were to employ their vaunted missile strike capabilities, the moment to do it would be now when the Israeli armour is drawn up in massive parks outside Gaza, a perfect target even for longer range missiles of limited accuracy. Once dispersed into Gaza the armour would be far harder for Hezbollah to hit at range.
Hezbollah is even better equipped now to fight a defensive war in Lebanon than it was when it defeated the Israeli advance in 2006. But it is not configured or equipped to fight an aggressive ground war into Israel, which would be a disaster. It also has to worry about hostile militias at its rear. If Hezbollah can provoke an Israeli incursion into Southern Lebanon, that would enable it to inflict substantial casualties, but Israel is not going to do that in a way that detracts from its capabilities in Gaza. https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/25/craig-murray-the-chances-of-a-regional-war/
2023-10-23 We Are Going To Wipe You Off The Face Of The Earth, Israeli Minister Threatens Iran Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat said on Sunday that the Israeli forces would “eliminate” Hezbollah and target Iran if the Palestinian militants open up a “northern front.” The Iranian diplomat later doubled down, warning the U.S. and Israel that, if they do not stop mistreating the Palestinians, “anything is possible at any moment and the region will go out of control.” Amir-Abdollahian added that further escalation would have “far-reaching repercussions.”
The IDF and Hezbollah have repeatedly exchanged fire since the fighting erupted between the Israeli forces and Hamas earlier this month. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated on Sunday that Hezbollah would suffer “unprecedented destruction” if it officially joins the war against the Jewish state. The Israeli army made several large-scale incursions in Lebanon to fight the militants there in the past. The most recent invasion took place in 2006.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has warned that American forces in the Middle East face increased risk of being attacked as Iran and its allies in the region look to exploit the turmoil created by the Israel-Hamas war. Bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria have already been targeted in rocket and drone attacks in recent days, and the Pentagon is concerned about further escalation of the Israel crisis, Austin said on Sunday in an ABC News interview. “In fact, what we are seeing is the prospect of a significant escalation of attacks on our troops and our people throughout the region, and because of that, we are going to do what is necessary to make sure that our troops are in a good position, they are protected, and that we have the ability to respond.”
The U.S. State Department ordered the departure of all non-emergency government staffers and their families from Iraq on Sunday. The department issued a similar order for its embassy in Baghdad and its consulate in Erbil on Friday, citing increased security threats.
The tiny Mediterranean country, Lebanon, is home to Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim political party with an armed wing of the same name. Israeli soldiers and militants have traded fire across the border since Israel’s war with the Palestinian group Hamas began, but the launches so far have targeted limited areas. Hezbollah has reported the deaths of 24 of its militants since Hamas’ bloody Oct. 7 rampage in southern Israel. Hezbollah has vowed to escalate if Israel begins a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, which is likely, and Israel said it would aggressively retaliate. Israel sees Iran-backed Hezbollah as its most serious threat, estimating it has some 150,000 rockets and missiles aimed at Israel.https://countercurrents.org/2023/10/we-are-going-to-wipe-you-off-the-face-of-the-earth-israeli-minister-threatens-iran/
2023-10-08 ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 2: Israel declares war as casualties skyrocket Hezbollah launches limited strikes.
On Sunday morning, October 8, Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon fired rockets into northern occupied Palestine at three Israeli targets in the Shebaa Farms region, which is historically Lebanese land that has been occupied by Israel since 1967. The areas targeted by Hezbollah were “radar sites” such as Zebdine and Ruwaisat al-Alam.
The Islamic resistance organization put out a statement following the attack, proclaiming that it was “on the road to the liberation of what remains of occupied Lebanese soil,” and that an armed force in Hezbollah had carried out these attacks on the Israeli sites with “a large amount of artillery fire and guided missiles.”
The immediate cause of the strike was its coinciding with the surprise attack of the Gaza resistance a day earlier, which Hezbollah conducted in retaliation for Israel’s retribution against Palestinians in Gaza and its attacks on Al-Aqsa, and “in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance and their struggle,” as conveyed by a Hezbollah spokesperson.
Yet the Lebanese strike was also preceded by gradually mounting tensions on occupied Palestine’s northern border, namely between Hezbollah and the Israeli regime. The tensions expressed themselves in various incidents and inflammatory remarks from Israeli officials, including Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s threats of sending Lebanon “back to the Stone Age” after Hezbollah put up tents on the Israeli side of the border.
By approximately 11:50 a.m. local time,, the head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council, Hashem Safi al-Din, put out a statement saying that “we are not remaining neutral in the battle that is being waged against the Israeli occupation.”
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