A Hezbollah commander describes battling Israel in Lebanon

BEIRUT, Lebanon — It was too harmful to satisfy in individual.

Israel has been searching him and his comrades, choosing them off by airstrike and drone, in shock assaults that always kill civilians alongside them.

In a 40-minute cellphone name late Thursday, a Hezbollah subject commander instructed NPR how he was wounded in Israel’s huge bombardment of Beirut a day earlier, which killed greater than 350 folks, in response to Lebanese authorities. An Israeli missile exploded on the street subsequent to a constructing within the capital’s southern suburbs, the place he was sheltering. Flying glass and particles injured him within the legs and arms, the commander says. Two folks, he stated, died subsequent to him.

The following day, as he spoke to NPR, he was again on his toes.

“I have an enemy occupying my land,” he stated. “Where am I supposed to be?”

He gave solely his nom de guerre, Jihad, out of concern Israel would monitor and kill him. He additionally gave his age: 62. He is been a member of Hezbollah’s navy wing since 2001, and his present rank is “the equivalent of a two-star,” he stated, although declined to provide his precise job title, which may additionally determine him. He stated he commutes backwards and forwards between Beirut’s southern suburbs, the place Hezbollah has places of work, and southern Lebanon, the place he instructions troops engaged in fight with Israel.

“Let’s just say my expertise is those things that fly,” he laughs. He means rockets, which Hezbollah has been firing into northern Israel by the 1000’s.

After the US and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants retaliated on March 2 by firing rockets south from Lebanon. They briefly halted assaults this week, on information of a ceasefire between the US and Iran, which Hezbollah says it believed would cowl Lebanon. However after Israel insisted it did not, and launched its largest assault on Lebanon because the begin of renewed battle, Hezbollah says it is resumed firing rockets.

“We’re fighting an enemy that has the latest weapons, all the technology, but we are holding our ground,” Jihad says. “If you’re skilled, you let him get closer. What kind of nerves do you have, and what kind of steadfastness?”

“That’s where the battle happens,” he provides.

NPR spoke to Jihad to get a uncommon glimpse into his secretive Shia Muslim militia’s continued capabilities, its new command construction, and contemporary techniques the group is utilizing to evade Israeli surveillance. He cited “mistakes” his group made in 2024, which led to Israel’s killing of Hezbollah’s then-leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and described how the group has rearmed since then.

The USA, Israel and lots of different international locations think about Hezbollah a terrorist group. The group has navy and political wings, and 14 of its lawmakers sit in Lebanon’s parliament.

The group has stated it opposes talks deliberate for Tuesday in Washington between the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors, which signify the 2 international locations’ first official negotiations since 1983.

Passing notes on the battlefield 

NPR spoke to Jihad by cellphone, however he was not on his personal system.

Hezbollah largely eschewed cell telephones and different know-how after a September 2024 Israeli assault by which 1000’s of pagers and walkie-talkies utilized by Hezbollah exploded near-simultaneously, killing dozens of individuals. Israeli intelligence brokers have described their decade-long plot to embed explosives in batteries within the units, which have been offered to Hezbollah by a pretend firm in Europe.

Since then, Jihad says the group now not imports any electronics. “We don’t trust anything anymore,” he says. He makes use of an old school walkie-talkie himself. “Everything we have is old,” he says, mentioning old-school Motorola units and radio transmitters.

Some battlefield orders even come by way of handwritten notes, carried by couriers on motorbikes, he says.

Hezbollah has a brand new org chart

Hezbollah has gone again to fundamentals since that pager assault, and Israel’s killing later that very same month of Nasrallah, Jihad says. One other founding member, Naim Qassem, has changed him.

Qassem has “changed the whole approach,” Jihad says, adopting a decentralized command construction first pioneered by Imad Mughniyeh, a Hezbollah chief killed in a 2008 automotive bombing in Syria. He break up fighters into semi-autonomous items that do not talk for safety causes.

“One specializes in shooting, another watches the road. Another might even specialize in wrapping sandwiches [for the fighters]!” he says. “You execute your own specific tasks, with no understanding of what we as a whole are doing.”

Underneath Qassem, Jihad says he believes Hezbollah is each nearer to Iran, and likewise extra compartmentalized. He tries to check the command construction to one thing NPR may be extra acquainted with.

“For example, in journalism, you do this and he does that. Your job reflects what you’ve studied and what your experience is,” he says. “It’s like that. We have courses and qualifications, depending on the professional track you’re on.”

How Hezbollah rearmed after 2024

This Israeli invasion has reignited a long-running battle that was purported to have paused with a November 2024 ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, by which Lebanon’s Military promised to disarm Hezbollah within the nation’s south. The United Nations says Israel violated that ceasefire 1000’s of occasions between late 2024 and early this 12 months, with continued airstrikes which have killed greater than 100 civilians.

Whereas Hezbollah held its hearth throughout that interval, Jihad says they by no means disarmed. He says they pointed Lebanese troopers to disused, defunct or broken outdated stockpiles they now not wanted, and allow them to confiscate these. However Hezbollah’s actual arsenal was largely untouched, he says.

“They didn’t confiscate anything! We gave them empty boxes, or a few old items to go blow up,” he explains.

He says Hezbollah’s weapons weren’t as depleted by the 2024 battle as Israel believed, and that the group has re-armed since then — with a mixture of imported weapons and domestically manufactured ones.

“These days, on the internet, you can learn how to manufacture anything,” Jihad says.

He would not say the place the meeting of weapons occurs. However Hezbollah is thought to function a community of underground tunnels and caverns. A few of the entrances have been destroyed by Israel in 2024, however specialists say lots of the buildings stay intact and in use.

Hezbollah historically received most of its weapons from Iran, by way of Syria. However after the autumn of its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in December 2024, Qassem lamented that his group’s provide route had been severed.

Jihad says that ended up not being the case.

“There’s nothing that can’t be smuggled through Syria — Kornets, Konkurs,” he stated, naming Russian-made anti-tank weapons.

An abrupt ending 

After 40 minutes, Jihad stated he needed to go. He sounded nervous. NPR may hear Israeli drones buzzing behind him, and warplanes flying low.

“We need to change our position,” he stated.

After which he hung up.