Hezbollah transformed: The lasting impact of Israel’s October attack

Report by Wissam Nasrallah, English adaptation by Mariella Succar 

Shortly after 11 p.m. on Thursday, October 3, 2024, more than 70 tons of bunker-busting bombs slammed into Beirut’s southern suburbs, hitting the district of Mrayjeh in the heaviest bombardment since the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah one week earlier.

The thunder of consecutive explosions carried for miles, captured on camera in scenes that shocked the capital. Within hours, Israeli media outlets pointed to the intended target: Hashem Safieddine, head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council and widely seen as Nasrallah’s successor.

For days, there was silence. Neither Israel nor Hezbollah made an official statement, leaving the region bracing for confirmation. It was only on October 8 that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared: “We killed Nasrallah, his successor, and the successor of his successor.”

But doubts lingered. Israel’s public broadcaster noted that security services had not verified Safieddine’s death. No one was allowed near the rubble, with Israeli officials reportedly hoping that if the missiles had not struck his underground headquarters, the collapse itself would finish the job.

Nearly three weeks later, in late October, Israel officially confirmed that Safieddine had been killed. In practice, the confirmation came only when Hezbollah was able to retrieve his body from beneath the ruins.

By that point, Israel had wiped out most of Hezbollah’s senior military command, destabilizing its chain of command and plunging the group into visible confusion. The scale of the blow was later acknowledged by the man chosen to lead Hezbollah in the middle of the war.

“The assassinations of Hezbollah’s leaders were a severe moral strike against the resistance, its supporters, and its allies,” senior Hezbollah official Naim Qassem said on November 20, 2024. “They disrupted the conduct of the battle and reshaped the party in ways unseen in more than three decades. That was precisely Israel’s objective.”

The killings rattled Hezbollah and forced a reckoning. Yet questions remain unanswered: Does Israel now see the group as less of a threat to its survival? Is Hezbollah holding back from retaliation to buy time for rebuilding? Or has the group lost the ability to strike back with force?

What is clear is that Hezbollah today is not the same it was before October.