Lebanon’s Hezbollah is working to limit heavy casualties in the clashes in Israel

BEIRUT:

With dozens of Hezbollah fighters killed in three weeks of border clashes with Israel, the Lebanese group is working to limit its losses as it prepares for the possibility of a protracted conflict, three sources familiar with its thinking said.

The Iran-backed group has lost 47 fighters to Israeli strikes on the Lebanese border since Hamas’s Palestinian ally and Israel went to war on October 7 – about a fifth of the death toll in a full-scale war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006.

With most of its fighters killed in Israeli drone strikes, Hezbollah revealed its surface-to-air missile capability for the first time, saying on Sunday it had shot down an Israeli drone. Missiles are part of an increasingly powerful arsenal.

The Israeli military, which has so far said it has lost seven soldiers on the border, has not commented on Sunday’s reported drone incident. However, Israel said on Saturday that it stopped a surface-to-air missile fired from Lebanon at one of its drones and responded by hitting the launch site.

Also read: Fires break out in southern Lebanon as Israel-Hezbollah border clashes escalate

One of the sources familiar with Hezbollah’s thinking said Reuters that the use of anti-aircraft missiles was one of several steps taken by the Shiite group to limit its losses and counter Israeli drones, which have picked up its fighters in the rocky terrain and olive groves along the border.

Hezbollah had made “arrangements to reduce the number of martyrs,” the source said, without elaborating.

Since the start of the Hamas-Israel war, Hezbollah’s attacks have been calibrated to limit clashes in the border zone, even as it has shown a readiness for all-out war if necessary, sources familiar with its thinking say.

Israel, which is waging a war in the Gaza Strip that it says aims to destroy Hamas, has said it is not interested in a conflict on its northern border with Lebanon. But Israel has also said it would wreak havoc on Lebanon if a war broke out.

Terrible power

Hezbollah, Iran’s most formidable ally in Tehran’s “Axis of Resistance,” has long said it has expanded its arsenal since 2006 and warned Israel that its forces pose a more potent threat than before. He says his arsenal now includes drones and rockets that can hit all parts of Israel.

In border clashes since Oct. 7, Hamas, which also has operatives in Lebanon, and a Lebanese Sunni Islamist faction, Jama’a Islamiya, have fired rockets from southern Lebanon toward Israel.

Hezbollah itself has refrained from launching rockets, such as the unguided Katyusha and others that can fly deep into Israeli territory, a step that could trigger an escalation.

Instead, its fighters fire on visible targets across the border with Israel, using weapons such as Kornet guided anti-tank missiles, a weapon the group used extensively in 2006, the three sources said.

Read: Nearly 20,000 displaced in Lebanon as border clashes with Israel escalate

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV channel regularly plays footage from the latest clashes showing what it says are strikes on Israeli military installations and positions visible across the border.

While Hezbollah’s tactics have so far helped contain the conflict, the attacks mean its fighters must be close to the border, making them more vulnerable to the Israeli military.

The sources said some fighters had also underestimated the drone threat after years of fighting in Syria, where they had fought rebel groups with nothing like the hardware of the Israeli army. Hezbollah played a decisive role in helping President Bashar al-Assad defeat Syrian rebels.

“The technical superiority of Israeli drones makes Hezbollah pay the price of this number of fighters,” said Nabil Boumonsef, deputy editor at Lebanon’s Annahar newspaper, referring to Hezbollah’s huge death toll.

The conflict has been contained so far

Clashes between Israel and Hezbollah have generally been confined to a narrow strip of land that runs along the border, usually within three to four kilometers of the border.

However, Israeli shelling has increased in recent days, according to security sources in Lebanon. They said this included a strike on Saturday in Jabal Shafi, a mountainous region about 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the border.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the Jabal Shafi strike. Hezbollah has not commented on reports of this strike either. The Israeli military said it was responding to sources of fire in Lebanon.

Also read: Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders discuss how to achieve ‘victory’

Hezbollah lost 263 fighters in the 2006 war, when Israel pounded sites across Lebanon during a conflict that lasted more than a month. The war broke out when Hezbollah launched an incursion into Israel and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers.

Hezbollah’s death toll of 47 this time, in such a relatively limited conflict, has shocked the group’s supporters. The group’s al-Manar TV broadcast daily funerals for fallen fighters who were buried with full military honors, their coffins draped in the group’s yellow and green flag.

Hezbollah released a handwritten letter from its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah to the media last week, saying fallen fighters should be called “martyrs on the road to Jerusalem.”