Hezbollah is attempting to move advanced weapons into civilian areas in Lebanon in preparation for another conflict with Israel. The Iran-backed terror group has an extensive, video-documented history of exploiting Lebanese civilians, and during its 2006 war with Israel successfully created incidents in which human shields were endangered and killed.

The organization has spent the subsequent years creating a network of weapons storage facilities and bunkers in civilian areas throughout southern Lebanon:

For almost two decades, the Israeli intelligence establishment, led by Military Intelligence and the Mossad, has been playing a game of wits, and cat and mouse with the intelligence establishments of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. Israel is trying to obtain as much information as possible on the weapons supply “food chain,” beginning with Iran’s decision to supply weapons, through their transfer to Syria and until their arrvial at the bunkers.

These bunkers, according to foreign reports, are concentrated mainly in Shi’ite villages in the Bekaa Valley and in the Dachia quarter in southern Beirut – the location of Hezbollah’s central command, which has been rebuilt in recent years after having been almost completely destroyed by the IAF during the Second Lebanon War.

Another expose published earlier this year detailed how Hezbollah exploits poor Shiite families, subsidizing their homes in exchange for those families becoming human shields:

At the same time, the Shiite terror group launched a major social/real-estate project that bolstered its political standing: It purchased lands on the outskirts of the villages, built homes on these lands and offered them to poor Shiite families at bargain prices (to rent or buy), one the condition that at least one rocket launcher would be placed in one of the house’s rooms or in the basement, along with a number of rockets, which will be fired at predetermined targets in Israel when the order is given.

Israeli intelligence officials believe that one in ten houses in southern Lebanon is used as a storage facility for Hezbollah weapons.

[Photo: david55king / Flickr]