[News] Shifting to Guerilla Warfare, Hezbollah Delivers Massive Blows to Israel

[Anti-Imperialist News]

palestinechronicle.com
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/shifting-to-guerilla-warfare-hezbollah-delivers-massive-blows-to-israel/>
Shifting to Guerilla Warfare, Hezbollah Delivers Massive Blows to IsraelApril
22, 2026
------------------------------
Hezbollah releases footage of strikes deep inside Israel as operations
intensify. (Photo: video grab)

*By Robert Inlakesh
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/robert-inlakesh>*

All along, this was precisely the scenario that Hezbollah had hoped for, to
rope the Israelis in on the ground, in order to eventually inflict enormous
losses on them.

Hezbollah has shifted to waging a guerrilla war against the Israeli
occupiers in southern Lebanon, reminding Tel Aviv why it decided to
withdraw from the country in the year 2000. Instead of allowing Israel to
violate the ceasefire unchecked, the responses have been immediate and
painful.

On April 16, the White House declared that a 10-Day temporary ceasefire had
been reached between Lebanon and Israel. Only the day prior, both Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Israel Katz had
delivered speeches claiming that their operations in the south of Lebanon
would continue to expand.

This caused immense frustration amongst the Israeli public and sparked
backlash in the Hebrew-language media.

Sure enough, when the ceasefire went into effect, the Israelis decided to
violate the agreement at least 10 times within an hour, mainly through
artillery fire on Lebanese villages in the south. This was followed by two
drone strikes targeting vehicles in southern Lebanon, in addition to an
attack on an ambulance.

Israeli Arabic spokesperson Avrechay Adraee, who was supposed to have
retired, yet has made a recent return, openly released a video message
ordering displaced Lebanese civilians not to return south of the Litani
River area. The occupation forces even bombed the area where efforts were
being made to reconstruct a temporary bridge that had been deliberately
destroyed during the war to prevent civilian passage into the south.

For a period of time, it had been feared that a return to the pre-March
“ceasefire” in Lebanon had just been secured in favor of Tel Aviv once
again, where the Israelis carried out frequent operations without any
response. All of this as Israel was now occupying more territory illegally,
as the Lebanese government negotiated for a normalisation agreement.

Hezbollah Secretary General, Sheikh Naim Qassem, then delivered an address,
during which he made it clear that the Lebanese leadership was behaving
unacceptably and betraying their duties through their normalizing efforts.
He also insisted that the previous status quo would not return and that
instead his organization would respond to the Israeli violations, fighting
until the occupation of South Lebanon was totally abandoned.

Little more than a day into the ceasefire agreement, despite no
announcements of retaliatory actions from Hezbollah, a series of “security
incidents” were announced by the Israeli Army. The first few were said to
have been tanks running over previously planted explosives, making it
appear as if the incidents had occurred by accident.

However, three major “security events” occurred, inflicting at least 37
Israeli casualties, 2 of whom the Israelis admitted were deaths. At this
point, it had become clear that something else was going on.

Then came an official Hezbollah statement, claiming responsibility for a
single incident, where 4 Israeli Merkava tanks were said to have been
completely destroyed by pre-planted IEDs, detonating them on an enemy
convoy, after Lebanese fighters had been monitoring their movements. After
this, the Israeli military decided not to publish any details on the IED
attacks.

Yet, Israeli media commentary explained that soldiers, stationed in what is
being called a “buffer zone” in southern Lebanon, have reported their
frustrations over Hezbollah drones monitoring their movements.

In other words, Hezbollah has cells throughout the territory that Israel
claims to be in control of, who do reconnaissance, then calculate the
movements of Israeli forces, anticipating their common routes, before
planting IEDs that they then detonate on convoys.

Not only is this a transition to asymmetric warfare, which the Iraqi
resistance became well known for when fighting an insurgency against US
occupying forces, but it is also beginning to usher in flashbacks to the
days of the occupation in South Lebanon.

As an example, in 1997, Hezbollah had managed to pull off what was known as
the Ansariyeh Ambush, killing 12 Israeli special forces soldiers from its
elite Shayetet 13 Unit. This had been carried out through reconnaissance
and intelligence work, to anticipate the arrival of the Israeli unit, a
total disaster for the Israeli military at the time.

Today, Hezbollah has advanced from what it was in the 1990s and possesses
much more sophisticated and powerful weapons. What it means for Israeli
forces on the ground is that they must constantly keep moving, as they
remain under surveillance and could be subjected to an ambush at any time.

When Israeli tanks travel down roads they have taken a number of times
previously, they could suddenly face a series of EIDs. The more these
attacks happen, the more terrified the Israeli conscript army’s soldiers
become, fearing the possibility that they could at any moment lose an arm,
leg, or their life.

Hezbollah, having shifted to such tactics, could also seek to capture
Israeli soldiers at one point, something that would represent a catastrophe
for the Israeli political leadership.

If such a capture operation succeeds, then Netanyahu’s campaign of triumph
will be suddenly transformed into yet another costly operation that will
inevitably accelerate on the ground, while eventually forcing him to commit
to a prisoner exchange.

All along, this was precisely the scenario that Hezbollah had hoped for, to
rope the Israelis in on the ground, in order to eventually inflict enormous
losses on them and fulfill the pledge of its former leader, Seyyed Hassan
Nasrallah that the south will become a graveyard for the invading army and
that they will eventually have no tanks left.


*– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He
focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this
article to The Palestine Chronicle. *
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20260422/2e43c67b/attachment.htm>