The narrow, steep roads of Lebanon's south have become corridors of death. Despite a ceasefire last year, hundreds of Israeli airstrikes target the region on a near-daily pace, creating what amounts to an open season on the men and women who make up Hezbollah's ranks.
The party has responded with a directive: stay hidden, according to fighters who are now bound by signed commitments forbidding them from travelling to border villages except in emergencies, effectively placing them under what many describe as a form of "house arrest."
For those who once moved openly through southern Lebanon, conducting raids, coordinating community activities, mediating disputes in villages, the transformation has been total and psychologically destabilising; their lives have fractured into something unrecognisable.
Weight of survival for Hezbollah
Hassan, who uses a pseudonym for security reasons, is a father of two. He sits in a rented flat in a suburb in southern Lebanon, with children aged six and two shuttling between rooms. Before the latest war by Israel, he lived differently; there was land with olive trees, space for his children to play, and the hum of family life.
He fought at the beginning of the conflict in the border town of Adaisseh before his house was targeted in early 2024, leaving him with moderate injuries that eventually forced him to stop active military duty.
When the war ended and his health improved, he returned to his home to start clearing the rubble.
"But as Israeli strikes intensified, Hezbollah's leadership issued its directive: stay away from border villages," he told The New Arab.
Hassan complied. For weeks, he broke the restriction only to drive his motorcycle to school, a journey he soon abandoned after other fighters were killed performing the same task. Now his son travels by school bus instead.
"If Israel wanted to kill me, they would have killed me in my bed at home," Hassan says, smiling despite the weight of his words. "But caution is still a duty".
His wife, Fatima, was once a teacher by profession during a time she describes as a stable life, better off than many villagers. She found a school willing to let her teach Arabic in the morning and take private students in the afternoon. Before that, she couldn't leave the house; Hassan needed constant care.
The flat is located in a building filled with mechanics on the ground floor, nothing like the life they knew. There are no more family gatherings, no evenings with extended relatives. Hassan's brothers, also Hezbollah members, fled too; one moved to Beirut's southern suburbs. They haven't seen each other in six months.
"There are no family get-togethers any more," says Muhammad, Hassan's brother, now living in the capital. "Fear of being targeted has forced isolation on everyone. Each of us lives in a different area with a separate life from the rest of the family".
He describes the transformation as a profound rupture. In the villages, life was built on kinship—multi-story family compounds where relatives lived vertically, shared wells and communal solar panels, and exchanged meals daily. The architecture of life was collective.
"I live in a city I don't understand the nature of its people," Muhammad says. "I'm bothered by the noise and motorcycles. The neighbours think it's all normal".
Scope of targeting
At least some of what Israeli forces are doing appears deliberate. Multiple Hezbollah members interviewed confirm that Israeli targeting has expanded well beyond military positions to include economic interests, infrastructure, engineers, and workers.
Recent assassinations have occurred in residential neighbourhoods and on crowded public roads, not just in military zones, suggesting Israeli forces have abandoned previous protocols against targeting civilians in proximity to fighters.
This shift has sparked serious discussion among southern residents.
Lawyer and activist Hassan Bzeih posted on Facebook that the security negligence among some party members has become "unbearable," criticising the continued use of mobile phones, group movements, and participation in public events.
"It's no longer acceptable," he wrote, noting that Israeli, US, and British surveillance capabilities have reached unprecedented levels. "We know the enemy has moved into a fantastic world of technology and surveillance, but it's also not acceptable to neglect precautionary measures."
Yet party members insist the targeting is systematic regardless of precautions.
"Even if I'm coming back from a funeral or a wedding, I or someone else could be a target," says Jihad, who also used a pseudonym for security concerns. Jihad is a former Al Radwan Unit fighter who participated in battles in Syria before being injured by a pager explosion; an attack that injured thousands of Hezbollah members and civilians across Lebanon and Syria in September 2024. The injury ended his front-line military work; he now works in graphic design for the party.
"Minutes after my death, the Israeli military spokesman would come out and say: we eliminated a Hezbollah element who was working on rebuilding military capabilities and participated in the recent war," Jihad explains. "That's how they justify any targeting. The justification is always ready".
Jihad relocated his family from Nabatieh to Beirut, repeating a pattern his own family experienced during the 1978 Israeli invasion. His three children, the oldest not yet eleven, had been attending Al-Mahdi school in Nabatieh, a ten-minute drive from home. Now they attend the same school's Beirut branch, and the displacement has devastated them.
"My life after the war changed completely, like the life of everyone in the south," Jihad says. "We lived in a security we didn't appreciate. I could move whenever I wanted, anywhere in the south, even at zero distance from the border. Only now do we understand the value of that security. Even daily life details changed. My children haven't adapted. How can they? And I haven't adapted either".
The real loss for Jihad isn't material. It's the dissolution of communities that Hezbollah built over generations in border areas, tight-knit societies with deep roots, now scattered to cities.
"I returned to Beirut hoping to bring my children back to our village one day," he says.
While some party members remain in the rear areas of the south, their movements are severely restricted. They believe they could be targeted at any moment. According to their assessments, Israeli surveillance penetrates everything—from a wife's or child's mobile phone to internet routers, artificial intelligence systems, listening devices, drones, and satellites. Every member could be exposed; the decision to strike hasn't been made yet.
Hezbollah leadership appears to recognise these vulnerabilities. The party has categorised its members by risk level, with military elements facing the highest threat. The political wing and some religious leaders continue moving with greater freedom, suggesting Israeli targeting priorities remain focused on military capabilities, though this could shift with political circumstances.
Yet the intensity of strikes has increased even as fighters have withdrawn and restricted movements. This suggests either Israeli forces are achieving deeper intelligence penetration, or the targeting has become more ambitious in scope, or both.
Constancy of commitment
Despite everything, neither Hassan nor Jihad expresses regret about their participation in the recent war or the destruction that followed. For them, the cause transcends personal loss. The family operates from a deeply held conviction: "What has befallen me is made easier by the fact that it is in God's eye".
Still, the psychological impact is clear. Jihad notes that while life in Beirut remains "the best available option" with fewer movement restrictions than the south, any new escalation would make the southern suburbs an Israeli target once again. The Israeli military has already issued evacuation warnings for buildings in the area, giving residents less than thirty minutes to flee.
"If there's any coming escalation, the suburb will be a target and the displacement journey will begin again," Jihad says, "and in a moment when the Israeli army issues a warning for one building or more".
The roads of southern Lebanon, once routes of daily life, have become something else entirely. And for the people who fought battles across them, the transformation is neither temporary nor reversible, at least not yet.
This article is published in collaboration with Egab.