Can Israels claims about Hezbollah rockets stored in Lebanon homes be trusted ?
Not at all.
Following nearly a year of its offensive in Gaza and cross-border hostilities with Hezbollah, Israel has intensified its assaults on Lebanon, resulting in the deaths of at least 558 people in its strikes on Monday.
The indiscriminate attacks, which resulted in the deaths of at least 50 children in a single day, are a continuation of Israel's actions in Gaza, where it has falsely claimed that Palestinians use their own people as ‘’human shields.’’
Tel Aviv has made similar allegations over Lebanon, claiming that Hezbollah is stockpiling missiles and other weaponry within civilian homes.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, spokesman for the Israeli army, claimed in a video shared on the military's X account on Monday that:
"For over 20 years, Hezbollah has deployed its arms inside homes and militarised civilian infrastructure. As a result, the Hezbollah terrorist organisation has turned southern Lebanon into a battlefield."
He continued, presenting a computer-generated image of a cross-section of civilian structures housing missiles and other military equipment:
"This is a village in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah stores cruise missiles, rockets, launchers and UAVs inside civilian homes, hidden behind the Lebanese population living in the village. We are monitoring these activities, locating the weapons and destroying them with precise intelligence-base strikes."
In late October 2023, Israelfalsely claimedthe presence of an advanced Hamas "command and control center" beneath Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital, employing comparable imagery.
The visuals produced by Israel prior to the invasion into Al-Shifa depicted a network of tunnels housing conference rooms and weapons arsenals, patrolled by armed militants.
A January investigation by Forensic Architecture exposed Israel's false claims, revealing significant deficiencies in the evidence submitted by Tel Aviv to the ICJ, employing 3D modeling, geolocation, OSINT, image complex, pattern analysis, and shadow analysis.
The report states:
"Our findings also indicate that the computer-generated graphics alleging an extensive tunnel network beneath Al-Shifa are nothing like the Israeli military’s own claims about the tunnel footprint on 22 November."
"We also found that their 27 October claim (which accompanied the computer-generated graphics) that a ‘command and control centre’ existed beneath Al-Shifa contradicts the claims they subsequently made and evidence they presented on 20 November."
A Hamas "command and control" center was neverdiscovered beneath the hospital.
Comparable claims were made regarding other hospitals in Gaza, notably the Al-Rantisi Children's Hospital, which Hagari personally inspected and claimed to have found an Arabic-language document listing the names of guards overseeing captives. Arabic speakers subsequently indicated that the document was a calendar listing the days of the week.
The Israeli army removed a post on X on Tuesday, claiming to have found a "rocket weighing over 1 ton" in a warehouse in Lebanon. The Israeli army provided no rationale for the removal.
During the months of cross-border exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel, the Lebanese group has disseminated photographs allegedly depicting an extensive tunnel network that seems more advanced than those utilized by Hamas.
In an August video entitled "Our mountains are our stores," the group asserted possession of a diverse collection of precision and non-precise weaponry, displaying footage of fighters and cargo trucks operating underground.
Observers have questioned why Hezbollah would conceal its armaments in civilian homes, given that its tunnel network is more extensive and older than that of Hamas in Gaza.
Philip Proudfoot, a British anthropologist, stated on X:
"These are images of Hezbollah’s underground network shown in recent videos by the party. Israelwants you to believe an organisation with infrastructure like this is storing high-value rockets in the bedrooms of Lebanese grandmothers. They’re trying to justify mass murder."
Despite the inability to independently verify the Hezbollah video, the depicted tunnels align with foreign analysts' assessments of Hezbollah, which the Center for Strategic and International Studies characterized in 2018 as "the world's most heavily armed non-state actor."
Israeli experts and news reports from earlier this year concur that the group utilized its underground network to store weapons and transport them to launch sites without the need for civilian infrastructure.
Tal Beeri, the head of Israel's security-focused Alma Research and Education, informed The Times of Israel in January:
"It's not complicated from their point of view. Fateh 110 [surface-to-surface ballistic] missiles are carried on trucks.
The subterranean infrastructure enables a truck to transit to the place where the missile is to be fired. In theory, at the launch site, a platform can be constructed, or a slope leading up from the tunnel. The truck exits the tunnel, fires and goes back down.
When one flies over the site, all one can see is the mountain. It’s very hard to find the launch site. They are able to carry out a fast, mobile launch of missiles."