Around 600,000 people remain displaced from their homes in south Lebanon, nearly two years after Israeli bombs obliterated Hezbollah's headquarters and killed several of its most senior leaders in late September 2024. The movement that was declared decimated by foreign diplomats and regional powers has reorganized into a nimble guerrilla force — but the human cost of its resilience, and Israel's relentless campaign to destroy it, continues to mount across Lebanese villages reduced to rubble.
Middle East Eye spoke to seven figures with intimate knowledge of Hezbollah, as well as sources close to the party, Lebanese politicians and officials and Arab diplomats, almost all on condition of anonymity. The sources described how Hezbollah was sucked into a war despite severe misgivings, managed to resuscitate its military wing after defeat, and now operates under a ceasefire that exists mostly on paper.
The Decision to Fight
The decision to attack Israel in October 2023 was, three sources said, solely Hassan Nasrallah's and faced opposing views within Hezbollah's Shura Council, its executive body. Nawaf Moussawi, a senior Hezbollah official, former MP and head of its border and resources department, dismissed reports about Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar urging Nasrallah to join a coordinated surprise attack as "psychological warfare" and said, "It's pure propaganda and not facts on the ground."
According to two sources, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, then Iran's foreign minister, told Nasrallah when he visited Beirut after the 7 October 2023 attack that Tehran was prepared only to support the war morally. Nasrallah ordered a barrage of rockets on 8 October, opening a support front. Ibrahim Aqil, head of the Radwan Force special operations unit, disagreed and thought Hezbollah should either go all in or not at all.
For a year, Hezbollah and Israel exchanged cross-border strikes, with 7,000 rockets, missiles, drones and air and artillery strikes traded across the Blue Line. The Lebanese side lost 2,000 people, compared with 70 south of the border, and Hezbollah displaced 60,000 of Israel's citizens from the north.
Pagers, Walkie-Talkies, and a Near Massacre
On 17 and 18 September 2024, Israel detonated thousands of pagers and hundreds of walkie-talkies, killing around 40 people and wounding thousands more. David Barnea, then head of Mossad, said it was "a clear example of the realisation of our mission." Benjamin Netanyahu gave Donald Trump a gold pager to commemorate the attack.
Hezbollah sources said the operation was a failure from Israel's perspective. Around 2,500 pagers were in circulation at the time of the attack, and 15,000 walkie-talkies were in storage when Israel moved to that phase of the operation on 18 September. Just a few hundred walkie-talkies exploded, but at least 25 people were killed in the second attack compared with 12 the day before.
A Hezbollah inspection team had doubted the pagers and sent samples to Iran for further tests, which the sources said forced Israel's hand. Israel then waged a 66-day air and land campaign on Hezbollah, killing Nasrallah, his cousin and successor Hashem Safieddine, and most of the party's military leadership, including Aqil and the commanders of his Radwan Force. Whole units, ammunition stores and other targets were destroyed.
The Civilian Landscape
During the 15-month ceasefire period, Hezbollah faced 3,000 air, drone and artillery strikes. Israeli troops and contractors fortified and expanded five military bases and leveled every Shia-majority town and village along the border. One Hezbollah source said, "The border area is now like a football pitch – completely flat, not a single building standing, not a house, not a mosque."
The openly sectarian targeting by Israel, which described south Lebanon residents as the "Shia enemy population," has driven the community closer to Hezbollah. A visitor at a cemetery for slain fighters in Dahieh said, "I come to pay my respects to my friends who were killed fighting the enemy. But I have serious issues with everything that has happened."
Tarek Mitri, Lebanon's deputy prime minister, said it was "a war that Lebanon did not want, did not seek." Nawaf Moussawi responded, "Rather than identifying the occupation as the problem, this media campaign seeks to claim that the resistance is the problem."
Gamers and Guerrillas
Hezbollah reorganized its military wing into independent units following the model of guerrilla combat under the late commander Imad Mughnieh. Each unit received guidelines and pre-planned scenarios, and fighters were told they didn't have to fight until the last bullet. The new model was tested in March 2026 after the United States and Israel launched a war on Iran and killed its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
When war broke out again in March 2026, Israeli troops fanned out across Lebanese territory south of the Litani and beyond, establishing around 300 positions in private homes, abandoned military bases and a Crusader castle. Hezbollah relinquished urban areas such as Bint Jbeil under its new guidelines, but Israeli troops were constantly harried and around 20 soldiers were killed in south Lebanon since 2 March.
Gaming cafes became an unlikely military asset. Lebanese gamers made up the bulk of Hezbollah's drone pilots. Netanyahu described the cheap aircraft as a "central threat." Hezbollah also repurposed fibre-optic cable stored for the Almas-1 missile program for FPV drones.
The Ceasefire That Isn't
Technically, Israel and Hezbollah are observing a ceasefire in force since 16 April, but attacks have continued. The Lebanese state has sought to decouple Lebanon from the US-Israeli war on Iran through direct negotiations with Israel, and a framework negotiated in Washington has so far resulted in the Lebanese army being allowed to deploy in just one southern town in a pilot scheme.
Hezbollah sources and Lebanese officials said the pause isn't an end to the war. Iran has underwritten the truce and threatened shipping on the Strait of Hormuz if Israel violates the ceasefire.
The Human Toll and Internal Questions
Hezbollah is unable to provide the welfare services it once did because of a severe financial crisis and because funds are prioritized for military matters. One source said, "The party used to pay for housing, renovation, welfare. Now that has stopped," and said this was because there's no longer a land route to Iran through Syria and aviation between Iran and Lebanon is restricted.
One source close to the party said there are rising questions within Shia society. Sources in the party suggested the death toll across the two wars could be anywhere between 4,000 and 10,000 people, most of them in 2024.
A source close to Hezbollah's inner political circle said, "It is not the same party as it was in 2023." Hezbollah used to have huge rocket power, a presence on the border and backing and supplies that stretched continuously through the region all the way to Afghanistan. Today's slogans are about protecting Lebanon instead of Jerusalem.
Naim Qassem's elevation to secretary general was initially mocked, but he's navigated Hezbollah through the crisis and carried out a restructuring earlier this year that remolded the party and sidelined influential figures. A source close to the political circle said, "Despite everything that was said about Qassem, that he has a lack of charisma, he is building back the party in a transitional phase," and added, "He proved that he could hold ground and restructure the entire party and consolidate."
The Political Future
Hezbollah's relations with the Lebanese state are at a nadir after Hezbollah's 2 March attack on Israel, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam's outlawing of Hezbollah military activity and President Joseph Aoun's overtures to Israel. Sources said there were serious discussions after Israel's 2024 invasion about whether Hezbollah could transition from an armed movement to a purely political one. Hezbollah is the largest party in parliament and has long been a pillar of the Lebanese state.
A source close to Hezbollah's political circle said, "There are discussions in the background within the party about disarmament and what that might look like or mean, but no proposals can be put forward in a moment of war." The source added, "Importantly, Naim Qassem has no red lines."
According to two party sources and a Lebanese diplomatic source, Donald Trump grew so frustrated during some recent ceasefire negotiations that he telephoned the Lebanese ambassador to Washington and demanded a direct line to Hezbollah. Officials then tried to find a phone number for anyone in Hezbollah, calling anyone they knew who was Shia, even random sheikhs. The request was denied.
Why This Matters:
The story of Hezbollah's military resurrection is also the story of 600,000 displaced Lebanese civilians, flattened border villages, and a ceasefire that exists on paper while Israeli strikes continue daily. The human cost of this conflict — measured in thousands of Lebanese dead, entire communities erased, and a generation of displaced families — reveals the consequences of a regional proxy war fought on Lebanese soil. Israel's systematic destruction of every Shia-majority town along the border, described by its own officials as targeting the "Shia enemy population," has created facts on the ground that make any return to the status quo impossible. Meanwhile, Hezbollah's internal debates about disarmament remain theoretical as long as Israeli troops occupy Lebanese territory and strikes continue. The Lebanese state, caught between a resurgent Hezbollah and an occupying Israeli military, has neither the capacity nor the political will to assert control. What began as a support front for Gaza has become an open-ended conflict with no diplomatic resolution in sight — and Lebanese civilians continue to pay the price for decisions made in Tehran, Jerusalem, and Washington.