Lebanon Arrests 32 Suspected Israeli Collaborators Accused of Aiding Strikes on Hezbollah Leadership

By: Tzirel Rosenblatt

Lebanese authorities have arrested 32 individuals on suspicion of collaborating with Israel and providing intelligence that allegedly enabled Israeli forces to conduct a series of deadly strikes on Hezbollah’s command structure, according to a judicial official cited by Agence-France Presse (AFP) on Thursday. The sweeping arrests mark one of the most extensive counterintelligence operations in Lebanon in years, exposing what officials describe as an “intricate web of espionage” that penetrated deeply into Hezbollah’s operational heartland.

The revelations come against the backdrop of more than a year of sustained hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, including two months of open warfare that devastated parts of southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs — Hezbollah’s long-held bastion. Despite the November ceasefire, Israeli strikes have continued, with Israel accusing the Iran-backed terrorist organization of repeated violations.

According to the information provided in the AFP report, the judicial source, who requested anonymity, confirmed that six of the arrests occurred prior to the ceasefire, while the remaining suspects were detained in recent months as Lebanon’s security agencies expanded their investigation into what appears to be a sophisticated Israeli intelligence campaign targeting Hezbollah’s internal communications and logistics.

“So far, nine individuals have been tried by the military court,” the official told the AFP, noting that 23 others remain under investigation. The charges range from espionage and collaboration with the enemy to aiding military operations resulting in death. Under Lebanese law, any contact with Israel—considered an “enemy state”—is punishable by lengthy imprisonment and, in certain cases, hard labor.

The scope of the alleged espionage operation has shocked Lebanese officials, both for its depth and its timing. The arrests follow a devastating series of Israeli intelligence coups over the past year, including a dramatic September 2024 incident in which hundreds of Hezbollah-issued pagers and walkie-talkies simultaneously exploded across Lebanon. The operation, widely attributed to Israeli cyberwarfare capabilities, crippled Hezbollah’s communication systems, causing widespread chaos within the group.

As The Times of Israel reported at the time, the explosions killed at least 39 people and injured thousands, effectively paralyzing Hezbollah’s field coordination. Within a week of that unprecedented strike, Israeli forces launched a massive airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, killing the group’s long-time leader, Hassan Nasrallah—a blow from which Hezbollah has yet to recover.

According to the AFP report, investigators now believe that intelligence provided by several of the detained Lebanese suspects played a critical role in those operations, offering precise coordinates, personal data, and even photographs of Hezbollah’s top figures and facilities.

A second judicial official with direct knowledge of the ongoing inquiry told the AFP that two of the convicted individuals were sentenced to eight and seven years of hard labor, respectively. Both were found guilty of “providing the enemy with coordinates, addresses, and names of Hezbollah officials, knowing that the enemy would use this information to bomb locations where the group’s leaders were located.”

The official added that several of the accused admitted to transmitting intelligence to Israeli handlers during active hostilities in both southern Lebanon and Beirut’s Dahiyeh district, Hezbollah’s political and operational stronghold.

Among the detained is a religious singer with close ties to Hezbollah, whose brother was reportedly killed in an Israeli strike earlier this year. According to the information contained in the AFP report, investigators suspect that the man collaborated with Israel’s Mossad in exchange for financial compensation. He allegedly provided details that enabled the assassination of a Hezbollah commander and his son in south Beirut in April.

Perhaps most alarmingly, the second judicial official told the AFP that the suspect also supplied the names of newly appointed Hezbollah field leaders — those replacing slain commanders — allowing Israel to swiftly eliminate successors before they could consolidate power.

“This was not random information,” the source said. “It was targeted intelligence that showed a clear understanding of Hezbollah’s internal hierarchy and response mechanisms.”

A Lebanese security source, also speaking anonymously to the AFP, said that Israeli intelligence operatives had been seeking detailed information on the types of vehicles Hezbollah personnel used, particularly motorcycles and civilian cars favored by mid-level commanders to avoid detection.

According to The Times of Israel report, Israel has conducted numerous precision strikes on motorbikes and cars across Lebanon in recent months, claiming that these vehicles were used to transport weapons or high-ranking operatives. The security source told AFP that some of the Lebanese agents were instructed to photograph specific buildings and infrastructure suspected of concealing weapons caches or command-and-control hubs.

“Some agents from outside Hezbollah’s ranks were tasked with shadowing key figures, recording their movements, and relaying images of locations Israel believed were linked to arms storage,” the source explained.

These operations, officials say, appear to have been orchestrated in parallel with Israel’s intensive aerial campaign that killed multiple Hezbollah commanders since late 2023. As The Times of Israel report noted, Israel’s intelligence services have been conducting “one of the most systematic campaigns in decades” to dismantle Hezbollah’s leadership network and cripple its capacity to threaten northern Israel.

The alleged infiltration of Hezbollah comes amid a period of deep socioeconomic crisis in Lebanon. The country’s financial collapse in 2019 left much of its population impoverished, creating fertile ground for foreign recruitment. As the AFP has previously reported, Israel and other foreign intelligence agencies have increasingly used online recruitment networks to identify potential informants desperate for income.

“Many of those arrested had no prior history of anti-Hezbollah activity,” a Lebanese counterterrorism officer told the AFP. “They were people struggling to survive, and Mossad exploited that vulnerability.”

Lebanese officials believe that most of the recent recruits were not members of Hezbollah, but rather civilians living in Hezbollah-controlled areas who were paid small sums for information-gathering tasks. Still, the intelligence they provided — about car models, building layouts, and personnel movements — may have had devastating effects once combined with Israeli surveillance and satellite data.

As The Times of Israel documented extensively, Israel’s precision campaign has decimated Hezbollah’s upper echelons, with at least a dozen senior commanders killed since mid-2023. The death of Nasrallah was followed by the elimination of his chief of operations, Nabil Qaouk, and logistics commander Ali Hussein al-Amin, leaving the group in disarray.

Even after the November ceasefire, Israel continued targeting Hezbollah weapons depots and rocket launch sites, claiming that the group had repeatedly violated truce terms by staging attacks along the northern border. Hezbollah has retaliated sporadically, firing rockets toward Israeli military posts in the Galilee, though on a smaller scale than during the war’s height.

Analysts quoted by The Times of Israel argue that the arrests in Lebanon reflect Hezbollah’s growing vulnerability. “Hezbollah’s operational secrecy has been profoundly compromised,” said a Beirut-based political analyst. “These arrests show that Israel’s intelligence penetration runs far deeper than anyone realized.”

The Lebanese judiciary’s pursuit of espionage cases against alleged Israeli collaborators is not new. Dozens of such arrests have been made over the past decade, but this latest wave represents a significant escalation — both in scale and in the sensitivity of the information compromised. Those convicted of collaborating with Israel face up to 25 years in prison, and in wartime circumstances, sentences of hard labor are common.

However, Lebanon’s own political establishment remains divided on how to manage the fallout. Hezbollah, still the most powerful armed force in the country, exerts enormous influence over Lebanese state institutions. As the AFP report noted, critics fear that while arrests will be publicized, systemic vulnerabilities — especially in Lebanon’s intelligence and telecommunications networks — remain largely unaddressed.

While the guns have quieted along the Israeli-Lebanese frontier since the ceasefire, the shadow war of espionage and infiltration shows no sign of ending.

Both the AFP and The Times of Israel reports emphasize that Israel’s intelligence offensive represents a broader strategic effort: not only to dismantle Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, but also to undermine its social and political authority within Lebanon.

For Hezbollah, the exposure of such widespread internal betrayal represents a potentially existential threat. For Israel, the arrests are proof that its intelligence reach remains formidable — even within the strongholds of one of its most entrenched adversaries.

As one Lebanese official told the AFP, summing up the grim reality: “In Lebanon, the war may be over for now. But the spying never stops.”