With Laila Bassam, Tom Perry, Maya Gebeily
BEIRUT (Reuters) – With the bodies of its fighters still scattered on the battlefield, Hezbollah must bury its dead and provide aid to its supporters who have borne the brunt of Israel’s attacks, as the first steps on a long and expensive road to recovery, children. officials said.
Hezbollah believes that the number of its fighters killed during the 14-month war could reach several thousand, with the largest number killed since Israel went to war in September, three sources familiar with its operations say, citing undisclosed internal estimates.
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One source said the Iran-backed group may have lost as many as 4,000 people – 10 times the number killed in its 2006 month-long war with Israel. So far, the Lebanese authorities have said that 3,800 people have been killed in the ongoing conflict, without distinguishing between fighters and civilians.
Hezbollah emerges shaken from top to bottom, its leadership still reeling from the assassination of its former leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and its many displaced supporters by carpet bombing in southern Beirut and the destruction of entire villages in the south.
By ending the violence on Wednesday, Hezbollah’s plan includes working to completely overhaul its system, investigating the security violations that helped Israel hit the hardest, and a comprehensive review of the past year including its mistakes in undermining Israel’s technological capabilities, three sources familiar with the group’s thinking said.
For this story Reuters spoke to 12 people who shared some of the challenges facing Hezbollah as it seeks to rebuild itself after the war. Many asked not to be named to discuss sensitive issues.
Hassan Fadallah, Hezbollah’s political chief, told Reuters that the priority is “the people.”
“To protect them, to remove the debris, to appear to the martyrs and, in the next phase, to rebuild,” he said.
Israel’s efforts have focused heavily on Hezbollah’s Shi’ite Muslim heartlands, where its supporters have been hit hard. They include people still nursing injuries from an Israeli attack on its telecommunications equipment in September.
“I have a brother who was martyred, a brother-in-law who was injured in a pager attack, and my neighbors and relatives were all martyred, injured or missing,” said Hawraa, a woman from southern Lebanon with family members. fight for Hezbollah.
“We want to collect our martyrs and bury them … we want to rebuild our homes,” said Hawraa, who stayed in his village until he was forced to flee by an Israeli attack in September. He declined to use his full name, citing safety concerns.
Israel’s offensive has displaced more than 1 million people, most of them from Hezbollah-held areas.
A senior Lebanese official familiar with Hezbollah’s thinking said the group’s goal would be to secure their return and rebuild their homes: “Hezbollah is like a wounded man. Does a wounded man stand up and fight? A wounded man must mend his wounds. .”
The official expected that Hezbollah will conduct a different policy review after the war, dealing with all the major issues: Israel, its weapons, and the politics of Lebanon, where its weapons have always been a problem.
Iran, which founded Hezbollah in 1982, has promised to help with reconstruction. The cost is huge: the World Bank estimates that 2.8 billion dollars of house destruction in Lebanon, and 99,000 houses were partially or completely destroyed.
The Lebanese official said Tehran has different ways of getting money for Hezbollah, without giving details.
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a close ally of Hezbollah, is encouraging wealthy Lebanese Shi’ites in the diaspora to send money to help the displaced, two Lebanese officials said.
The officials also hoped that significant donations would come from Shia religious organizations across the region.
Hezbollah did not immediately respond to a detailed request for comment on the matter. Iran’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
‘INCLUSION’ WILL CONTINUE
Hezbollah has shown that it intends to protect its arms, dashing the hopes of Lebanon’s opponents who predicted that the pressure caused by the war would eventually lead them to surrender to the government. Hezbollah officials said the resistance – widely understood to mean its armed stance – would continue.
Hezbollah opened fire in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas on October 8, 2023. Israel continued to attack the group in September, announcing its intention to secure the return home of 60,000 displaced people in the north.
Despite the eventual collapse, Fadlallah of Hezbollah said that the resistance carried out by its fighters in southern Lebanon and the group’s rocket attacks towards the end of the conflict showed that Israel had failed.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says his plan has set Hezbollah back decades, removed its top leaders, destroyed many of its strongholds, destroyed thousands of soldiers, and destroyed its facilities near the border.
A US official said Hezbollah was “very weak” at the moment, both militarily and politically. A Western diplomat echoed the assessment, saying Israel had the upper hand and had almost dictated the terms of its withdrawal.
The cease-fire terms agreed by Israel and Lebanon require Hezbollah to be demilitarized in the area between the Israeli border and the Litani river, which meets the Mediterranean Sea 30 kilometers from the border.
Hezbollah, which approved the deal, has not yet announced how it wants to help fulfill the terms, including whether it will hand over its arms to the Lebanese army that is moving south, or leave weapons for the army to acquire.
Israel complains Hezbollah, which is rooted in southern Lebanon, never made the same terms when they agreed to end the previous war in the 2006 war. Israel says the group was preparing a major attack in northern Israel, targeting its forces along the border.
Andreas Krieg of King’s College in London said Hezbollah remained in power.
The actions of “his fighters in southern Lebanon and the rocket attacks that went down in Israeli territory in recent days showed that the group was still very capable,” he said.
“But Hezbollah will be very busy trying to rebuild infrastructure and, more importantly, find the money to do so,” he said.
‘DEBT REPAYMENT’
Hezbollah has been donating money to victims of violence since its inception, paying $200 a month to residents living in frontline villages, and giving more as people were forced to flee the area, according to recipients.
Since the hike began in September, Hezbollah has been paying up to $300 a month to help displaced families.
The group has made no secret of the military and financial support it receives from Iran, which sent large sums of money in 2006 to help the homeless and help rebuild.
Hezbollah supporters say more will be on the way. Another, referring to a conversation with a local Hezbollah official, said the group would cover a year’s rent for the homeless as well as the cost of furniture.
Addressing the people of Lebanon in an October sermon, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said “the destruction will be replaced…paying the debt to the injured, the bloodshed in Lebanon is our duty…”.
The World Bank, in the first estimate, put the cost of damages and losses in Lebanon at $8.5 billion, a bill that the government cannot meet, still suffering from the consequences of the worst financial collapse five years ago.
The Gulf says Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia helped pay $5 billion for reconstruction in 2006, the last time Hezbollah and Israel went to war. But there has been no sign that these Sunni-led Arab countries are ready to do so again.
Hezbollah did much of the reconstruction work after the 2006 war, financed by Iran and using its construction wing. The project was led by Sayyed Hashem Safieddine, the leader of Hezbollah who was killed by Israel 11 days after Nasrallah, in a sign of the great problems he will face at this time.
“For Hezbollah the most important thing is to guarantee the loyalty of the Shi’ite people. The destruction has been great and will affect the organization,” said Mohanand Hage Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center.
(Reporting by Laila Bassam, Tom Perry and Maya Gebeily in Beirut; Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)