Hezbollah faces long road to recover from war
BEIRUT—With the bodies of its fighters still strewn on the battlefield, Hezbollah must bury its dead and provide succor to its supporters who bore the brunt of Israel’s offensive, as the first steps on a long and costly road to recovery, four senior officials said.
Hezbollah believes the number of its fighters killed during 14 months of hostilities could reach several thousand, with the vast majority killed since Israel went on the offensive in September, three sources familiar with its operations say, citing previously unreported internal estimates.
One source said the Iran-backed group may have lost up to 4,000 people — well over 10 times the number killed in its monthlong 2006 war with Israel.
So far, Lebanese authorities have said some 3,800 people were killed in the current hostilities, without distinguishing fighters from civilians.
Hezbollah emerges shaken from top to bottom, its leadership still reeling from the killing of its former leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and its supporters made homeless en masse by the carpet bombing of Beirut’s southern suburbs and the destruction of entire villages in the south.
With a ceasefire taking hold on Wednesday, Hezbollah’s agenda includes working to reestablish its organizational structure fully, probing security breaches that helped Israel land so many painful blows, and a full review of the last year including its mistakes in underestimating Israel’s technological capabilities, three other sources familiar with the group’s thinking said.
‘Bid farewell to martyrs’
Hassan Fadallah, a senior Hezbollah politician, told Reuters the priority will be “the people.”
“To shelter them, to remove the rubble, to bid farewell to the martyrs and, in the next phase, to rebuild,” he said.
Israel’s campaign has focused largely on Hezbollah’s Shiite Muslim heartlands, where its supporters were badly hit. They include people still nursing casualties from Israel’s attack on its mobile communications devices in September.
“I have a brother who was martyred, a brother-in-law who was wounded in the pager attacks, and my neighbors and relatives are all either martyrs, wounded or missing,” said Hawraa, a woman from south Lebanon with family members who fight for Hezbollah.
“We want to collect our martyrs and bury them … we want to rebuild our homes,” said Hawraa, who stayed in her village until she was forced to flee by the Israeli assault in September. She declined to use her full name, citing safety fears.
The Israeli offensive displaced more than 1 million people, the bulk of them from areas where Hezbollah has sway.
