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Hezbollah Returns to Guerrilla Roots, Awaits Possible Israeli Ground Offensive
Israeli soldiers work on their tank on the Israeli side of the Israel-Lebanon border, amid escalation between Hezbollah and Israel, and amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in northern Israel, March 10, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Lebanon’s Hezbollah is applying lessons from its last war with Israel as it braces for a possible full-scale Israeli invasion and protracted conflict, returning to its roots in guerrilla warfare in south Lebanon, four Lebanese sources said.
Operating in small units, fighters from the Iran-backed terrorist group are avoiding the use of communication devices that could be at risk of Israeli tapping, and are rationing the use of key anti-tank rockets as they engage Israeli troops, said the sources, who are familiar with Hezbollah military activities.
Some 15 months since Israel pounded Hezbollah in their last war, the group sparked a new Israeli offensive last week by opening fire to avenge the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran.
Heavily criticized in Lebanon for dragging the country into a war that has displaced 700,000 people, Hezbollah has described its actions as “existential defense,” framing it as a response to Israeli attacks that have continued since a 2024 ceasefire.
While Israel plans for the likely continuation of its Lebanon offensive after the Iran war, the four sources said Hezbollah‘s calculations are based on Iran’s clerical leadership surviving the war, leading to a regional ceasefire of which it would be part.
FIGHTING FOCUSED AT INTERSECTION OF SYRIAN, ISRAELI BORDERS
The sources who are familiar with Hezbollah thinking declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter. The details of how Hezbollah is operating in the field have not previously been reported.
Hezbollah‘s media office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hezbollah, a Shi’ite Muslim group founded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982, was the only Lebanese group to keep its weapons at the end of the 1975-90 civil war to fight Israeli troops who occupied the south until withdrawing in 2000.
Hezbollah‘s role in driving them out has underpinned its popularity among many Shi’ites, though its decision to enter the Iran war has drawn criticism from within the Shi’ite community.
This war has come at a critical juncture for Hezbollah.
Greatly weakened during the 2024 war, Hezbollah has faced pressure from the Lebanese state to disarm. The Beirut government last week banned Hezbollah‘s military activities.
Adding to the pressures on Hezbollah since the 2024 war, its Syrian ally President Bashar al-Assad was toppled in December of that year, severing the main supply route from Iran.
The sources said much of Hezbollah‘s fighting on the ground had been focused so far near the town of Khiyam, near the intersection of Lebanon’s border with Israel and Syria.
This is one area where Hezbollah believes any Israeli land invasion could begin.
Reuters reported last week that Hezbollah‘s elite Radwan fighters, who withdrew from the south following the 2024 ceasefire, had returned to the area.
ISRAELI SOURCE: HEZBOLLAH STABILIZING RANKS DESPITE BLOWS
An Israeli security source said there was no sign that Hezbollah was looking to de-escalate – quite the opposite. While Israel had eliminated a few of Hezbollah‘s very senior commanders, it seemed that the group was managing to stabilize its ranks and make and execute decisions.
Two of the Lebanese sources said four deputies had been appointed for every Hezbollah commander, to ensure continued operations.
The Israeli military says it has struck hundreds of Hezbollah targets since March 2, launching airstrikes in the south, Beirut’s Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs, and the eastern Bekaa Valley.
The Israeli military has also sent more soldiers into south Lebanon, where some of its troops had remained since 2024, establishing what it has called forward defensive positions to guard against the risk of Hezbollah attacks on northern Israel.
Two Israeli soldiers have been killed in Lebanon.
Hezbollah has launched daily drone and rocket attacks at Israel.
In 2024, not only did Israel booby-trap hundreds of pagers used by Hezbollah, but it also penetrated the group’s private phone network, according to Lebanese officials familiar with Hezbollah‘s post-war investigation into breaches.
The sources said Hezbollah was avoiding any devices that could be susceptible to eavesdropping.
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UCLA student government condemns campus Hillel for hosting former hostage
A campus event featuring freed Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov drew the condemnation of UCLA’s student government on Tuesday. In an open letter, the UCLA Students Associated Council said that bringing Tov to speak to students “served to legitimize and normalize” atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon.
Shem Tov, 23, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in Southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and held hostage in Gaza until his release in a prisoner exchange in February 2025. UCLA hosted him on April 14 for a Yom HaShoah event.
“While we affirm the humanity of all people impacted by violence, we reject the selective platforming of narratives that obscure the broader reality of ongoing state violence,” the student government letter wrote in the letter, which was addressed to the UCLA administration and UCLA Hillel among others. “Israel is currently continuing to carry out what has been widely identified by human rights advocates as a genocide in Gaza, while also expanding its illegal military campaign into Lebanon.
“In this context, elevating a single narrative, absent of critical political and humanitarian framing, serves to legitimize and normalize these ongoing atrocities.”
Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel’s director emeritus, called the statement “completely ridiculous.”
“You can’t present the narrative of your experience without it being called ‘one sided,’” Seidler-Feller said. “There has to be a counter-story to persecution. Is there a counter-story to killing people?”
UCLA Hillel executive director Daniel Gold dismissed the criticism in Tuesday’s letter as antisemitic.
“Hillel at UCLA and Students Supporting Israel UCLA would like to apologize…for absolutely nothing,” he wrote in a statement. “Members of UCLA student government have once again shown they are anti-dialogue, anti-learning, anti-truth, anti-student and antisemitic.”
The USAC did not respond to a request for comment.
As college campuses across the country became a hotspot for pro-Palestinian activism following the Oct. 7 attack, UCLA, with an activist history and a large Jewish population, stood out as a major flashpoint. Its student encampment was the site of a riot in April 2024 and eventually cleared by police in riot gear.
The USAC has sided with pro-Palestinian protesters throughout. In a Feb. 2025 letter titled “We Are All SJP,” the USAC, which is democratically elected by the roughly 30,000-member UCLA student body, condemned Chancellor Julio Frenk’s suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine. The letter referred to Israel only as “the Zionist state” or put the country’s name inside quotation marks.
The University of California has since been sued by the Department of Justice, which said that UCLA created a hostile work environment against Jewish and Israeli faculty in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
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Trump extends ceasefire with Iran, even after Iran balks at new round of negotiations
(JTA) — President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he would unilaterally extend the U.S.-Israeli ceasefire with Iran, even though Iran had not agreed to his conditions or even to return to the negotiating table.
Trump announced the decision on Truth Social just hours before the two-week-old deal was set to expire. Citing Iran’s “fractured” leadership, Trump wrote that he had been asked by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to “hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.”
Vice President JD Vance’s planned trip to Islamabad, where talks were set to take place, was postponed indefinitely after Iran failed to confirm its participation in negotiations.
Trump added that the United States would maintain its naval blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz, despite Iran’s repeated calls for the restrictions to be lifted.
The announcement marked a sharp departure from the president’s statements earlier in the day, telling CNBC that, if a deal was not made before the deadline, “I expect to be bombing.”
In a statement Tuesday, Sharif thanked Trump for his “gracious acceptance” of Pakistan’s request to extend the ceasefire, adding that the country would “continue its earnest efforts for a negotiated settlement of the conflict.”
The announcement adds to uncertain about the war’s future, including for Israelis who lived through six weeks of Iranian bombing, and renews questions about Trump’s commitment to achieving his war goals, which have varied and included blunting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, achieving regime change, and destroying Iran’s stockpile of ballistic missiles. He said earlier this week that he was asking Iran to limit its nuclear program for 20 years, five years longer than was required by the deal struck by Barack Obama in 2015. Trump exited that deal in 2018.
Last week, Trump announced a different ceasefire, between Israel and Lebanon, on Truth Social, contradicting Israel’s claim that the Iran ceasefire would not apply to its fighting with Hezbollah, an Iran-backed proxy in Lebanon.
Trump’s announcement of the ceasefire extension came during the night in Israel, after Israelis began their celebration of Independence Day. It drew criticism from one of his staunchest pro-Israel supporters, the Zionist Organization of America, whose national president Morton Klein said in a statement that “interminable delay is the standard Islamic Iranian regime negotiating tactic” and that acceding to it represented a victory for Iran. The statement did not mention Trump.
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Alan Dershowitz quits Democratic Party, calling it ‘most anti-Israel party in U.S. history’
(JTA) — Alan Dershowitz, the prominent pro-Israel attorney whose clients have included Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, announced on Monday that he was leaving the Democratic party and registering as a Republican.
Describing himself as a “lifelong Democrat,” Dershowitz wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he had decided to “bite the bullet and register as a Republican,” citing Democratic support for an arms embargo on Israel last week and the Michigan Senate candidate Abdul el-Sayed’s anti-Israel rhetoric.
“There is no denying that the hard left, anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party has moved from the fringe to the mainstream,” Dershowitz wrote, adding that “Republicans have their own antisemitic fringe, but for now it remains a fringe.”
The announcement formalized a political evolution for Dershowitz, who defended Trump during his first impeachment and has increasingly broken with Democrats over Israel in recent years.
In 2021, Dershowitz nominated Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Avi Berkowitz, Trump’s top Middle Eastern envoy during his first administration, for the Nobel Peace Prize over their hand in shaping the Abraham Accords.
Dershowitz — who has recently faced scrutiny over his ties to Epstein, and previously denied allegations of sexual misconduct made by one of Epstein’s accusers — panned the Democratic Party as the “most anti-Israel party in U.S. history” in the op-ed.
“I believe that the Democratic Party’s hostility to Israel represents a deeper and more dangerous shift away from the center and toward a radical approach that is bad for America and the free world,” Dershowitz wrote, adding that he intended to “work hard to prevent the Democrats from gaining control of the House and Senate.”
Dershowitz’s comments are in line with Trump’s statements about Jews and the Democratic Party. He has repeatedly expressed amazement at how any Jews could vote for the Democrats considering his own record when it comes to Israel.
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