Hizbollah allows rare glimpse of devastating firepower that could be heading Israel’s way
The militia welcomed its VIPS and journalists with a fanfare performance from its band. But the atmosphere quickly changed when their fighters started jumping through hoops of fire, shooting off the back of motorbikes and roundhousekicking terracotta pots to pieces.
On the hillside backdrop, Israeli flags were blown up and explosions boomed across the mountain, filling the air with dust and smoke, as they simulated storming a settlement.
As they captured an enemy soldier, an explosion hit a car. A fleet of drones danced in the air throughout the performance. They blew up a wall that was supposed to represent the border and charged through – the graffiti depicting Israeli abuses even matched the real wall. Men ran around with anti-drone guns.
The performance was a show of strength from Hizbollah, and The Daily Telegraph had front-row (plastic) seats.
The official reasoning behind the exercise was the anniversary of “Liberation Day”, the annual celebration of Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon on May 25 2000.
The “axis of resistance” show, though, came just a month after Israel faced a multi-front confrontation with rocket attacks from both southern Lebanon and Syria. It was the largest escalation since that war and brought the region dangerously close to fresh conflict.
It is extremely rare that Hizbollah, a Lebanese militia and Iranian proxy force, allows foreign reporters on to its military bases.
But they had a message: they are ready and prepared to fight if Israel crosses any red lines.
Sitting on our plastic chairs in front of the simulated fighting, for the few hundred audience members it was a jumpy but surreal experience.
Hizbollah-affiliated newspapers had sent journalists to interview the Western reporters about what we were expecting from the day as we waited to enter the military post. We had not been expecting live ammunition that sounded as though it was ricocheting around above our heads.
“We are coming for you in places that you know and places that you don’t,” the Hizbollah member narrating the exercise boomed through a microphone.
Hizbollah’s number two, Hashem Safieddine, gave a speech in which he emphasised their “complete readiness to confront any aggression” by Israel. He also emphasised “balance” though, with both sides wary of starting a new war. Israel would “later” see their precision-guided missiles, the senior official said, if anything was to escalate.
For Hizbollah, the performance was a low-risk way of reminding the region of their strength and their military arsenal. While tit-for-tat exchanges still keep the border tense, both sides have avoided escalations large enough to start another conflict since the brutal 2006 war.
Hizbollah did not take responsibility for the rocket attacks fired from the south of Lebanon last month, but it is On the hillside backdrop, Israeli flags were blown up and explosions boomed across the mountain unlikely that Hamas, which Israel blamed for the escalation, could have carried it out without their approval. The head of their political bureau was also in Lebanon meeting the Hizbollah chief at the time of the attacks.
The Telegraph spotted delegations from Iranian proxy forces Hamas and the Houthis in the audience yesterday.
Mohammad Yassin, the head of the Palestinian Liberation Front’s Lebanon wing, said that the united front of the anti-israel and pro-iran alliance was not new, but this event was a reassurance of how closely they would stand together.
Hizbollah-affiliated journalists and delegations from the axis of resistance were keen to make sure that we knew that what we had seen was just the “tip of the iceberg” of the party’s weapons arsenal.
“You should write in the newspaper that Netanyahu is this big,” the man sitting in front of me said as he held his thumb and index finger barely apart. He later told me that he had been involved in organising the event. He estimated that it had cost more than $20,000 (£16,000), “but that’s not including the ammunition… and we used a lot of ammunition,” he said with a smirk.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime event. You are lucky to be here, you have the scoop.”