Screenshot of video from Israeli research center Alma, which accuses Hezbollah of using a valley and tunnel in the Jbeil region for military operations.
The Energy Ministry on Wednesday refuted Israeli accusations of the presence of Hezbollah-operated missile launch sites in the Jbeil and Kesrouan regions, north of Beirut, assuring that the infrastructure in question belonged to the Beirut and Mount Lebanon Water Board.
These statements come at a time when a video originally published on June 5, 2023, has recently surfaced on social networks and is being widely shared. The video was released by the Israeli research center Alma, which specializes in security issues on Israel's northern border. The video accuses Hezbollah of using a civilian tunnel and a valley to launch missiles towards Israel from the Jbeil region, and even goes so far as to calculate the distance separating the Jabal Moussa nature reserve (Jbeil-Kesrouan) from the Golan Heights, Haifa and Tel Aviv.
"The Ministry of Energy assures us, after studying these videos, that they are structures belonging to the Beirut and Mount Lebanon Water Authority, in particular the tunnel created to divert the Nahr Ibrahim river for the construction of the Janneh Dam. The videos show the valley surrounding the dam, which was created during the construction work and has nothing to do with [Israeli] allegations of possible Hezbollah infrastructure," says the ministry.
Contacted by L'Orient-Le Jour, Hezbollah was not available to comment on the Israeli accusations.
The video, which shows satellite images of the tunnel and valley in question, claims that "the road through the valley is perpendicular to Israel and that Hezbollah can fire from there." This location would even be "an ideal launch pad for Hezbollah's UAV drones and Fateh-110 and Khaibar-1 rockets, which have a range of over 150 km."
The video provoked a number of reactions on the Internet, with some denouncing Hezbollah's weapons and others claiming it was Israeli propaganda.
Alma also accuses Hezbollah of "seeking to hide in civilian infrastructures to escape Israeli strikes" and lists strategic locations in Shiite-majority villages in the region that could be used by the party. The video ends with a photo of an Iranian flag allegedly hoisted somewhere in Jbeil, with no further details.
Since Oct. 8, 2023, Hezbollah has been involved in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Almost daily incidents have been taking place in southern Lebanon since the start of the Gaza conflict, and have already resulted in thousands of displaced persons among the inhabitants of border villages and 206 casualties among Hezbollah fighters, as well as 40 civilian victims, according to a count by L'Orient-Le Jour.
This article originally appeared in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.