As Lebanon Reels From Israeli Attacks, the Future Is Murky for a Wounded Hezbollah

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As Lebanon Reels From Israeli Attacks, the Future Is Murky for a Wounded Hezbollah

Some experts said that Israel’s onslaught had left Hezbollah in disarray. Others noted its large weapons stockpiles and history of adapting to battle Israel’s much more high-tech military.

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By Ben Hubbard

Reporting from Istanbul

Swaths of southern Lebanon are smoldering ruins. Highways are clogged with thousands fleeing the possibility of an even bigger war between Israel and Hezbollah. As towns and villages held funerals on Tuesday, Lebanon was just beginning to grapple with the fallout from its deadliest day in decades.

A vast wave of Israeli airstrikes on Monday targeting parts of the country where Hezbollah holds sway killed hundreds of people and plunged Lebanon into a deep state of uncertainty over what Israel would do next, how deeply the militia had been damaged and what sort of response its remaining forces could muster.

Israel said it had hit more than 1,000 sites, mostly in southern and eastern Lebanon, aimed at the fighters and military infrastructure of Hezbollah, the Lebanese political party and militia it has been fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border for 11 months. At least 558 people were killed in the strikes, including 94 women and 50 children, Lebanon’s health minister told reporters on Tuesday.

That toll marked a terrible milestone for Lebanon: Monday was the country’s deadliest day since its 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990.

“The victims of a strike by the Israeli enemy on the village of Arnoun. Targeted in their homes!” read text over a photo shared on social media of three women killed in one of the strikes.

The death toll given by the health ministry did not differentiate between fighters and civilians, and the strikes overwhelmingly hit parts of the country where Hezbollah dominates, suggesting that Israel had struck another fierce blow to the group. That capped a week in which Israel also blew up electronic devices distributed by Hezbollah, killing dozens of people and injuring thousands more, and assassinated a group of its military leaders in an airstrike near Beirut.

Some experts on Hezbollah suggested that Israel’s recent attacks had largely debilitated the group, leaving its membership in disarray.

“They have no options,” said Hilal Khashan, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut and the author of a book on Hezbollah. “Israel disabled Hezbollah.”

The attacks since last Tuesday have hit both Hezbollah’s leadership and its fighters hard while severely disrupting their ability to communicate and coordinate large-scale retaliation against Israel, he said.

“Now Hezbollah is headless,” Mr. Khashan said. “Israel eliminated Hezbollah’s leadership, so the rank and file are astray.”

Other experts acknowledged the severity of the blows but were more cautious about writing the group off so quickly, citing its large weapons stockpiles and history of adapting to confront Israel’s much more high-tech military.

Hezbollah was formed with Iranian help in the 1980s to fight the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in 2000. In the years since, it has grown into a significant political player in Lebanon and the country’s most powerful military force while sending fighters to help other Iranian-backed forces in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Israel, the United States and other countries consider it a terrorist organization.

Hezbollah launched cross-border attacks on Israel after the start of the war in Gaza last October in solidarity with the Palestinian group Hamas, which is also backed by Iran. Israel responded by striking Hezbollah sites in Lebanon, but for many months, both sides made efforts to keep their battle focused on the border area. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has said that the group would continue striking Israel as long as the war in Gaza continued.

Last week, Israeli leaders sharply escalated the attacks on the group, saying that removing it from the border zone was the only way that the tens of thousands of Israelis who have fled their homes in the area could return home. (About 90,000 Lebanese have fled their homes near the border, too.)

A diplomat with knowledge of the talks aimed at containing the violence, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the news media, said Israel was demanding that Hezbollah agree to a cease-fire along the Lebanon-Israel border regardless of what happens in the war in Gaza and that it must move its forces and arms away from the frontier.

Joseph Daher, who teaches at Lausanne University in Switzerland and wrote a book about Hezbollah, said Israel had greatly increased the pressure but that Hezbollah was unlikely to agree to its demands.

“It puts pressure politically and socially on Hezbollah, but will it make Hezbollah separate the Gaza front from the Lebanese front? I don’t think so,” he said. “Nor will it get Hezbollah to withdraw its military capacities from the border area.”

So far, at least, Hezbollah does not appear to have changed its strategy of trying to avoid a total war that could cause deep damage to the movement and to Lebanon, Mr. Daher said.

“We are already in a form of war, but they don’t want a total war with Israel,” he said. “This is why they are maintaining a calculated and to some extent moderated reaction, although intensifying their attacks against Israel, as seen this weekend.”

Hezbollah has continued to strike Israel in recent days, including with long-range missiles that it says it has aimed at military bases and other sensitive sites. Many have been intercepted by Israel’s defenses and little serious damage has been reported.

Before the Gaza war, Hezbollah was widely considered one of the most heavily armed nongovernmental forces in the world.

Its military wing was believed to have between 20,000 and 30,000 members, including low-level guerrillas, experienced commanders and teams of technicians focused on rockets, missiles and drones, according to Philip Smyth, an analyst with the Atlantic Council’s counterterrorism project.

Its arsenal included more than 100,000 rockets and missiles, likely including intermediate-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and portable antiaircraft weapons. Its fighters have deployed anti-tank missiles to blow up Israeli vehicles, and Israeli officials have said it has developed precision-guided missiles that could hit military bases or critical infrastructure.

Some of Hezbollah’s senior leaders have been with the group for decades, and many of its fighters got battlefield experience during the Syrian civil war and in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

How much of Hezbollah’s force and fighting ability remains after 11 months of war — and after the last week’s attacks — is an open question. The group had announced the deaths of more than 400 fighters between October and the most recent attacks.

Israel’s recent escalation injured many midlevel figures and killed military planners and a still unknown number of fighters and other operatives. Still, it has not yet prompted a large retaliation from Hezbollah, either because the group has chosen not to mount one or because it simply cannot.

In either case, Israel has robbed Hezbollah of its aura of power and competence, especially by turning its own covert communications network into a weapon against it, Mr. Smyth said.

“I don’t think anyone is under any illusions that this was a very deep attack that penetrated an opaque organization that prides itself on being opaque,” he said.