The portrait of Imad Mugniyeh is located at the entrance of Ansariya, a few meters from the place bombed by the Israeli air force. A faded photo symbolizing the decline experienced in recent years by the paramilitary movement of which Mugniyeh was one of its main military strategists. The mayor of the town, Abbas Faqih, is walking around mid-morning among the charred metal debris that were once excavator shovels. Dozens and dozens of vehicles reduced to blackened scrap metal. Some of the machines are still burning and emitting a black column of smoke into the sky.
The bombings left several craters in the asphalt and riddled neighboring houses with shrapnel. The fury of the explosions tore off the roofs made of asbestos and metal, which remain carpeting the adjacent streets.
Faqih is convinced that the recurrent attacks suffered by Ansariya since October 2023 - when the war between Israel and Hezbollah began as an extension of the one being fought in Gaza - are related to the sad memory that this town evokes for the Israelis. "We have been bombed 106 times. We are the most attacked population in this coastal region. They will never forget the defeat they suffered in Ansariya," he asserts.
Many things have changed since the military confrontation that took place here in 1997, on a citrus farm a few hundred meters away, which left 12 Israeli soldiers dead. The elite forces patrol Shayetet 13 was ambushed by Hezbollah militants in a surprising action that was later revealed to have been planned thanks to the group's ability to intercept the signal from the neighboring country's drones.
The operation was designed by the aforementioned Imad Mugniyeh and his cousin, Mustafa Badreddine, the pair that enabled Hezbollah's rise and transformation into the most militarily potent insurgent movement in the Middle East. That was history. Both Mugniyeh and Badreddine died in attacks organized by Israel. They did not even live to see the armed Lebanese group lose all its leadership, thousands of men, and suffer a severe setback during its last confrontation with Israel.
Now, the drones that could hack before patrol the skies of Ansariyah and the rest of Lebanon without any problems. Wassim Kasab, a 50-year-old Lebanese man, claims that on Wednesday he saw one of these devices recognizing the excavator company. "It seemed strange to me that it was there for so long during the day. They usually come at night. I wondered if that indicated they were preparing something. The answer came when night fell," he asserts.
The incident in Ansariyah was just one of about 12 bombings carried out by the Israeli air force last Wednesday - which left four dead and nearly 20 injured - in a new military escalation by Tel Aviv, despite the ceasefire signed in November of last year, which ended the confrontation between its soldiers and Hezbollah.
According to the local newspaper L'Orient Le Jour, Israeli aggressions have cost the lives of at least 310 people - without distinguishing between civilians and members of armed factions - since that date. The Israeli analysis center Alma, specialized in monitoring Hezbollah, estimated that during the same period, Israel killed 147 members of the group, a third of them between June and July of last year.
The spiral of violence coincides with the meeting of the government led by Nawaf Salam where the army presented a plan to disarm Hezbollah, a project supported by the United States and Israel, which has reactivated sectarian tension and the country's worst fears. In June, President Donald Trump's special envoy for the Middle East, Tom Barrack, presented local authorities with a detailed action plan to force Hezbollah to surrender its arsenal by the end of the year. He himself acknowledged that the timeline was "set" by Tel Aviv and not by Washington. U.S. envoys have promoted a whole pressure campaign in this regard, insisting that if Beirut rejects this idea, Israel could resume total war. Barrack himself publicly admitted days ago that Israel "has the desire and the ability to stay" in Lebanon.
The executive meeting in Beirut ended with the withdrawal of the block of Shiite ministers - the community from which Hezbollah draws its support - pushing the Arab state back to the end of 2006 when the representatives of that confession also decided to suspend their participation in the Executive, thus initiating a spiral that after months of incidents led to violent armed clashes in Beirut and other regions of the country. Those events, which raised fears that Lebanon could fall into another civil war, ended with the victory of the forces of the then Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrala, against the Sunni militias allied with the government and supported by the United States. The fear of a sectarian confrontation escalated after the virulent response of Nasrala's successor, Naim Qassem, to the government's proposal to disarm his organization.
"There will be no life in Lebanon. We will not surrender our weapons. We will fight if necessary, whatever the cost," declared the group's secretary-general on August 15 in a speech, where he made it clear that if the Lebanese army tries to implement what he defined as "a plan by the United States and Israel," the country will plunge into "civil war."
The huge mausoleum where the remains of Hasan Nasrala rest, located next to Beirut airport, has become a pilgrimage destination for thousands of Shiites, who, like Sheikh Said Abbas Fadllalah, believe that what is now being decided is not the future of Hezbollah but of their own community. Groups of devotees kneel and caress the marble plaque marking the grave of the former leader of the movement, while a huge plasma screen displays his statements.
"I am happy," reads a sticker adorning a religious bookstore inside the compound. Below is the face of Nasrala himself accompanied by many other leaders of the so-called Resistance Axis close to Iran, such as the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani or the former Hamas chief, Yahya Sinwar. "Whoever joins me will be martyred, whoever stays behind will not achieve conquest," the text adds.
Fadllalah says he was the first resident of Kfar Kila to return to the border village - razed by Israel - when the opposing soldiers withdrew on February 19. "I walked in, to give confidence to the rest of the inhabitants, so they would return," he comments. The cleric settled among the ruins. He estimates that "95% of the town has been demolished. Perhaps about 20 houses can be rehabilitated, no more." The same mosque where he officiated is a pile of crushed cement.
Imprisoned by the Israelis between 1998 and 2000 for his ties to Hezbollah, Fadllalah was forced to flee Kfar Kila again a few days ago, under the harassment of Israeli drones. "In recent weeks, they positioned themselves in front of my window and stayed there all night. One day they fired a rocket at a house a few meters away. I understood that the message was that I had to leave or I would lose my life. Only five families remain living in Kfar Kila. Israel wants the entire southern strip to be uninhabited," he points out.
"The goal is to eliminate the Shiites because they are the ones who formed Hezbollah. If they trample on us, we will defend ourselves,"
The words of the Shiite sheikh are confirmed during a tour of the populations near the border with Israel. Most remain little more than ghost villages, where rubble is the norm and inhabitants are the exception. "There are 24 affected villages and over 150,000 displaced people," Fadllalah indicates.
For days, Israeli drones have been dropping leaflets threatening anyone attempting to rehabilitate that area.
"The south, devastated and lifeless"
Even before the aerial assault on the Ansariyah company - one of the main firms of that type of machinery in the country - Israeli aircraft had been prolific in destroying each of the excavators approaching that region to collect the remains of demolished homes.
"The message is that the south must remain devastated and lifeless", stated the mayor of Ansariyah, Abbas Faqih.
The violent messages sent by Tel Aviv in this regard do not spare even the blue helmets deployed in that area. On Tuesday, Israeli drones dropped four hand grenades next to the international troops trying to open a route in the southern village of Marwahin, not far from the border with Israel.
The United Nations said it was "one of the most serious attacks against" its forces since last year's ceasefire. The explosions did not cause injuries, but could have been "very tragic," according to Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General.
The repeated killings of Hezbollah members have not been responded to by the Lebanese group, which seems to acknowledge its current military inferiority. The damage caused by Israel in their ranks is evident in the proliferation of funerals and portraits of new fallen fighters adorning the southern towns, including huge photos of the former Hezbollah Secretary-General Nasrallah, the most prominent victim of Israeli actions.
For the first time, images of Naim Qassem, the new leader of the movement, are also beginning to appear, albeit very timidly.
The acknowledged weakness of Hezbollah and the inaction of the Lebanese army in the face of repeated Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty - confirmed time and again by the blue helmets - have heightened the paranoia observed among Shiite faith members, where the majority are opposed to the movement surrendering its weapons.
"Israel's objective is to eliminate the Shiites because they are the ones who formed the 'resistance' [Hezbollah]. We don't want to break the country, but if they trample on us, we will defend ourselves. We will act like Hussein [the Shiite religious figure who died fighting against his adversaries in medieval times]," observes Fadllalah.
The cleric acknowledges that Hezbollah's involvement in the Syrian civil war came at a very high price. "We lost many people, and the Israelis managed to infiltrate [the group]. Now we are cleaning up [trying to capture the infiltrators]. But we still have a lot of strength," he adds.
Sitting in a modern café renovated in a shopping center in Nabatieh - in the south of the country - still largely devastated by the effects of Israeli bombs, Jalal Nasser takes another puff of smoke from his hookah before criticizing Hezbollah's involvement in the Syrian war and admitting that they "lost the last war" against Israel.
The Lebanese businessman openly states that he does not sympathize with the paramilitary group but also opposes dismantling their arsenal. "Who will defend our people? [Nabatieh is a predominantly Shiite city]. All of this is an Israeli project. They want to create chaos. Make us kill each other," he concludes.