Hezbollah militants are fleeing southern Lebanon, offering limited resistance to the Israeli ground invasion.
Fighters are said to have “left the area” without demonstrating “meaningful defensive operations”, according to the Institute of the Study of War (ISW), a major conflict think tank.
Sources in Israel told The Telegraph that months of pre-invasion raids into Lebanon had helped push some of the group northwards, while the bombing campaign and pager attacks were also forcing some to flee.
But the ISW said it was surprised by evidence from the early stages of the invasion showing an unwillingness to confront and fight Israeli troops.
A report by the Washington-based think tank said: “Hezbollah fighters do not appear to be defending against Israeli forces in these [southern] villages as the Israeli forces have consistently encountered weapons caches and infrastructure formerly used by Hezbollah fighters that left the area”.
The institute said it was “unclear why Hezbollah is not conducting meaningful defensive operations in response to Israel’s ground operations”.
It assessed that the Israeli air campaign in Lebanon was likely to have “severely disrupted the strategic and operational-level military leadership in Hezbollah and impeded Hezbollah’s ability to conduct and sustain coherent military campaigns, at least in the short term”.
Hezbollah suffered a huge blow when more than 1,500 operatives were taken out of action in Lebanon and Syria after a series of pager and walkie-talkie explosions rocked the terror group last month.
Days later, Hassan Nasrallah, the long-time leader, was assassinated in an airstrike in Beirut along with other top officials, while many of the commanders have also been killed.
Analysing the ground operations which come alongside the war in Gaza against Iran-backed Hamas, the report also said that, in spite of the losses endured in recent weeks, “even isolated tactical units should be capable of fighting effectively on their own for some time”.
A senior source in Israeli intelligence told The Telegraph that secret raids across the border had helped smooth the early stages of the war.
“We have been engaged inside Lebanon for more than half a year. There have been special forces going in and out of Lebanon as most of the villages in the south are deserted,” he said. “Most of the lines were destroyed by the air force, so there isn’t a lot of battle engagement. Most of them fled north of the Litani [river] and even further.”
A second source, in Israeli military intelligence, said those fleeing were even in the middle ranks of the group. “Some of the medium level echelons are even leaving Lebanon, into Syria and Iraq, trying to evacuate their families as well,” the source added.
He said it appeared Hezbollah was finding it “very difficult to conduct the same resistance” that was predicted.
While 24 Israeli soldiers and reservists have died since the ground operations began, the casualties are much lower than hundreds that were expected, he said. However, with the backing of Iran, he did not rule out the possibility of Hezbollah regrouping.
As the US now pushes the two sides for a ceasefire amid mass displacement and civilian casualties in Lebanon, the ISW said Hezbollah was “falsely presenting Israeli ground operations as a failure in order to degrade Israeli will and underscore Hezbollah’s own resilience in the face of massive Hezbollah losses since mid-September… and are using propaganda images to misrepresent military successes”.
Over 63,000 Israelis have been displaced from Israel’s north since Hezbollah began almost daily barrages of drones, rockets and missiles on Oct 8, in allegiance with Hamas in Gaza.
Subsequently, tens of thousands more were displaced in southern Lebanon, with more like 1.4 million Lebanese people now displaced as the conflict spreads across the country.
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