Over the weekend (September 20-22), 37 attacks were carried out against Israel on the northern border. Hezbollah claimed responsibility for 33 of the attacks.20 of the total attacks targeted unevacuated areas deep within Israel (located more than 5 km from the border with Lebanon). High-trajectory fire accounted for 81 percent of the attacks.
During the night and morning hours of September 22 alone, about 150 rockets, cruise missiles and UAVs were launched toward the territory of the State of Israel, most of them to northern Israel by Hezbollah. In addition, for the first time, Hezbollah fired Fadi 1 and 2 rockets into the Jezreel Valley and Haifa areas. The vast majority of the rockets were intercepted by IDF forces, but there were a number of strikes on homes, agricultural structures and roads.
The Fadi rockets are named after a Hezbollah operative who was killed in the past. According to Hezbollah, the rocket can carry a warhead of 83 kg, has a diameter of 220 mm, a length of 6 meters, and a range of 70 km.
In addition, today (September 22), the Islamic resistance in Iraq claimed responsibility for four attacks against Israel launching cruise missiles into northern Israel and UAVs into southern and northern Israel. In three of the incidents, cruise missiles and UAVs were intercepted by the IDF. No further indication was reported of another incident, for which they claimed responsibility.
These events come after a significant weekend of Hezbollah attacks in northern Israel. On Friday, September 20, Hezbollah fired 120 Grad rockets at Safed, the Golan Heights and the Upper Galilee, and about 20 Grad rockets at Meron and Netua area. The night before (September 19), Hezbollah fired between 6-7 heavy Burkan rockets at the community of Metula, causing heavy damage to residential buildings and a power outage in the hamlet.
Most of Hezbollah’s airstrikes over the weekend used high-trajectory fire, mainly Grad rockets.
High-trajectory fire has been Hezbollah’s main weapon in recent months. From the beginning of September 2024 to September 22, there were 152 high-trajectory shooting incidents towards northern Israel. This number includes the incidents, not the number of munitions fired in each event. It is important to emphasize that in high-trajectory launches, most of which is rocket fire, the number of munitions Hezbollah fires in each volley, is very high relative to other weapons. This is due to the fact that these are statistical weapons that are not accurate, and in every incident, Hezbollah launches several dozens of rockets.
On Friday (September 20), Israel targeted a building in Beirut where senior Hezbollah operative Ibrahim Aqil was inhabiting along with 15 senior members of the Radwan unit’s chain of command. Ibrahim Aqil is a member of the Jihad Council and head of the Operations Directorate; among other things, the Radwan unit is subordinate to him. Aqil is the second Hezbollah operative to be eliminated from the Jihad Council, Hezbollah’s high military command. On July 30, Fouad Shakar, head of Hezbollah’s strategic division, was eliminated. The Lebanese Health Ministry reported that the attack in Beirut claimed the lives of 50 people.
Aqil was not the only senior commander in Radwan to face elimination. Among them were Ahmad Mahmoud Wahbi (Abu Hussein Samir), who served as head of the training unit in Radwan and former commander of Radwan, who returned to de facto command of the unit after the assassination of Wassam al-Tawil on January 11. The main role of the Radwan unit is to carry out special operations such as infiltrating Israel territory, taking over territory such as settlements and army bases, and killing and abducting civilians and soldiers.
In our assessment, despite the significant elimination of Radwan’s entire chain of command, there is still a possibility of a limited penetration capability for a relatively small force to penetrate a small area of Israel. In our assessment, this could be done under the command of each of the battalion commanders in each of the unit’s six attack zones as an erupting event.
These eliminations took place after a wave of targeted explosions beginning on Tuesday, September 17, on pager devices used by Hezbollah operatives throughout Lebanon and Syria. For further information, see the article – Thousands of small bombs were detonated in Lebanon: “The Pager Offensive” – details and meanings.
The next day (September 18), a second wave of explosions occurred when hand-held radios used by Hezbollah operatives exploded. The Lebanese Health Ministry reported that both incidents resulted in 39 deaths and 3,000 injuries. The wounded suffer from varying degrees of wounds, many of which resulted in injuries to the limbs and eyes. Iran received a large number of the wounded for further treatment. The attack heavily targeted Hezbollah operatives, who use these means to communicate in an encrypted manner.
During the past week (September 16-22) Hezbollah reported that 63 military operatives had been killed, most of them as a result of explosions of radios and pagers, and in an elimination in Beirut. Many of the casualties were senior officials and military commanders. At the same time, the IDF continued to carry out attacks in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah, eliminating, among other things, two Hezbollah operatives who tried to plant an IED near the border fence.
At the same time, over the weekend the IDF attacked over 400 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, most of them terrorist infrastructure and rocket launchers that included thousands of launcher pads and over 1,000 launching barrels ready for immediate fire into Israel territory. The IDF’s intensive activity to attack rocket launchers and weapons depots is no longer focused on areas near the border in southern Lebanon, but also in the Bekaa Valley and other areas deep inside Lebanon.
The recent events are a significant blow to Hezbollah. These events not only hold enormous cognitive significance, as they demonstrate the ability to infiltrate Hezbollah’s ranks and harm its senior figures, but they also carry significant operational implications. The strike rendered many Hezbollah operatives and senior operatives unfit to serve in field positions, resulting in their deaths or injuries.
Furthermore, Hezbollah may encounter challenges in communicating among its operatives due to the unreliability of their current means and the apprehension about transmitting information over unencrypted networks. This may also be the reason for the physical multi-participant meeting between Ibrahim Aqil and the other senior Radwan officials killed in the Beirut attack.
However, our assessment indicates that Hezbollah’s rocket and missile array, deployed throughout Lebanon, have not suffered significant damage. The operatives of these systems can maintain functional continuity and carry out extensive and prolonged fire at various ranges in Israel, as we have witnessed over the weekend and during the past few hours.
In recent days, Hezbollah and its supporters have been promoting a narrative that emphasizes the harm inflicted on civilians in Lebanon during IDF attacks, with the aim of legitimizing Hezbollah’s attacks against Israel. Nasrallah’s speech on September 19 and Hezbollah’s claim of responsibility for the recent attacks deep into Israel both emphasized this narrative. Apart from the attack on the Haifa area, Hezbollah asserted in its official announcements about the weekend’s attacks that they were a response to civilian casualties in Lebanon. Hezbollah asserted that all its weekend attacks targeted military targets. In practice, however, most of Hezbollah’s attacks hit civilian areas, homes, and agricultural structures, causing fires in open spaces. The rockets hit the cities of Nazareth, a city that contains Arab Christian and Muslim residents, Kiryat Bialik and the Lower Galilee region.
Furthermore, the significant increase in attacks by the Islamic resistance in Iraq appears to be both in support of Hezbollah and in light of the recent elimination of senior figure Abu Haider al-Khafaji in southern Damascus (September 20). The official announcements do not explicitly mention this. Khafaji was killed in an airstrike on the road leading to Damascus International Airport, and according to the official announcement of his death, he served as a military advisor in Damascus.
