[News] Haifa and more: While Israel massacres, Hezbollah advances

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Haifa and more: While Israel massacres, Hezbollah advances

The occupation state’s now-daily killing rampages across Lebanon have not
disrupted Hezbollah’s ability to retaliate. Importantly, the resistance
intends to meet Israel’s every crass massacre with a qualitative military
thrust into the enemy’s depth and vulnerabilities.

Khalil Nasrallah <https://thecradle.co/authors/khalil-nasrallah>

SEP 23, 2024 -
https://thecradle.co/articles/haifa-and-more-while-israel-massacres-hezbollah-advances
(Photo Credit: The Cradle)

A significant shift has taken place on the southern Lebanese front in the
last few days. Barely had Benjamin Netanyahu’s government announced its new
war goal of returning displaced settlers to their northern homes and begun
the transfer of military weight to the north before Tel Aviv launched a
series of incendiary strikes throughout Lebanon.

Israel’s first salvo was two terror attacks conducted simultaneously in
several parts of the country by detonating consumer-tech devices – pagers
and walkie-talkies
<https://thecradle.co/articles/lebanon-hit-by-second-wave-of-israeli-terror-attack-as-new-explosions-rock-nation>
–
that killed 39 civilians and permanently blinded and dismembered thousands
more. Two days later, Israeli fighter jets bombed two residential buildings
in Beirut’s southern suburb, killing 54 people, including women and
children, and assassinating several commanders of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan
Forces, including the head of the forces, Ibrahim Aqil
<https://thecradle.co/articles/hezbollah-confirms-top-commander-killed-during-israeli-massacre-in-beirut>,
while expanding its air strikes to target what the Israelis claimed were
Hezbollah’s “military capabilities.”

The Lebanese Resistance movement does not deny that the strikes on the
southern suburb were painful for both Hezbollah and its supporters. But
they make clear that the Israeli attacks did not affect either their
military structure or operation capabilities. The evidence of this came
swiftly, with an initial Hezbollah retaliation
<https://thecradle.co/articles/hezbollah-strikes-deepest-israeli-targets-since-2006>
targeting
the Ramat David Military Airbase – the main base for occupation airforce
strikes on Lebanon and Syria – and the Rafael military industries complex,
southeast and north of Haifa, respectively.

These massive retaliations were intended to mainly confirm to the
occupation forces that Hezbollah has no plans to retreat from its own
stated goals of pressuring Tel Aviv to end its assault on Gaza – and that
it will not allow the Israelis to separate and compartmentalize the Gaza
front from the Lebanon one, as the US has sought to do throughout ceasefire
negotiations.

*Bombing ‘Dahiyeh’*

The Israeli military’s access to the resistance’s leadership is clearly the
result of years or even decades of intelligence efforts. It must be
acknowledged that what happened in Dahiyeh – or Beirut’s southern suburb –
last Friday showcased Tel Aviv’s ability to identify and target the
location of a meeting of Radwan Forces leaders, the vaunted Hezbollah
special forces that Israelis have obsessed over for years.

The execution of the assassination operation, compounded by Israeli “leaks”
that a “reliable intelligence source” provided them with target intel,
gives the impression that Israeli operatives were able to create a security
breach close to Radwan’s inner circle.

In reality, it is impossible to verify Israel’s claims for several reasons,
primarily because Tel Aviv is waging a media war of disinformation and
employing psychological warfare to target both the resistance and Israel’s
own domestic constituents.

For certain, no additional information was provided by Hezbollah about the
Dahiyeh attack – whether a breach of security occurred in its ranks or
something else. The resistance group is known for keeping tight control
over information derived from internal investigations and has rarely
deviated from that strategy. If Hezbollah manages to gather new information
from its investigations into Israel’s pager terror attack or from the
Dahiyeh bombing, it will surely use it only internally to build on its
flaws and minimize vulnerabilities.

*Israel’s goals*

The occupation state’s violent rampage against Lebanon last week sought to
achieve several goals:

First, to widely disrupt Hezbollah’s command and control system by striking
its communications networks and targeting central and pivotal leaders.

Second, to pressure Hezbollah to disengage from the Gaza front, which has
strategic consequences in the short and long term.

Third, Tel Aviv is trying to alter the security paradigm on its border with
Lebanon and implement more advantageous conditions that give Israel an
upper hand in its 11-month battle with the Lebanese resistance. The
Israelis are desperately seeking new, favorable rules of engagement with
their northern adversary – an ambition sought since Israel was militarily
ousted from Lebanon in 2000 and then again in 2006.

Fourth, the Israelis are working to prepare the ground for a future hot war
that will enable it to attack the resistance at a critical political moment
that serves its interests. Lastly, Tel Aviv’s recent attacks are meant to
send other regional actors a hard message, in particular West Asia’s
Resistance Axis, by demonstrating that they can effectively target and
degrade their ‘masterminds.’

*The fallout for Hezbollah*

Hezbollah has not concealed that Israel’s terror and assassination attacks
last week, which continue heavily today in Lebanon’s south, where hundreds
of civilians have been killed since the morning, have had a chilling and
demoralizing effect. However, several indicators show that the Lebanese
resistance has been able to absorb these blows and adapt rapidly without
impacting its structure or operations capabilities.

Thus far, it is hard to argue that Tel Aviv has succeeded in its goal of
disrupting Hezbollah’s command and control. Massive Israeli killing sprees
throughout Lebanon will not impact a resistance movement that has fought
guerrilla battles since its inception and has grown tremendously in
sophistication – both tactically, strategically, and in terms of
qualitative missile technology.

Instead, Hezbollah continues to firmly maintain its position on Israel
ending its military assault on Gaza and has quickly rearranged its internal
affairs to retaliate against the occupation state – even launching a new
phase of the conflict, which it calls the “open-ended battle of reckoning
<https://x.com/TheCradleMedia/status/1837865113887400020?t=fHhM0x7vdwSK0akUGQxAhA&s=07>,”
as announced by Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem during the
funeral of Commander Ibrahim Aqil in Beirut.

The announcement of the new phase was authorized by the Sunday morning
strikes when the Lebanese resistance targeted the Ramat David Military
Airbase southeast of Haifa and the Rafael military industries complex north
of the city with Fadi 1 and Fadi 2 missiles
<https://thecradle.co/articles-id/26962>, as part of its initial
retaliation.

*Messages of Hezbollah’s retaliation*

Through its initial retaliation and declaration of the new battle phase,
Hezbollah is sending the following messages:

First, the resistance’s command-and-control system was not damaged or
exposed to failure. Second, Hezbollah responded to Israel’s massive
expansion of strikes by immediately deepening its retaliatory strikes to
over 50 kilometers inside the occupation state. This is part of the
resistance’s deterrence formula imposed on Tel Aviv: an “expansion for
expansion.”

Third, Hezbollah will meet Israeli gradualism with gradualism to shuffle
the military cards constantly and push the enemy to change many of its
calculations.

Fourth, it will not just launch minimal retaliations to disrupt the enemy’s
goals, but will meet it with forceful and demoralizing strikes as well.

Accordingly, Israel’s carpet bombing in southern Lebanon all day today, its
massive Dahiyeh attack, and its state terrorism on Tuesday and Wednesday
have ushered in a new phase of confrontation, in which Israel’s every
initiative will be met with a counter. Perhaps the scene at the onset of
the “open-ended battle of reckoning” phase – waves of rocket fire in and
around the occupation state’s prized port city of Haifa – is the clearest
indicator of how Hezbollah remains cohesive, capable, and determined to
compete and impose new rules at every new turn with Israel.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20240923/4f80a2a9/attachment.htm>