Israel is continuing its campaign of targeted assassinations against Hamas officials and their allies in the Iranian-led "Axis of Resistance." Following the killing of Iranian general Reza Mousavi in Damascus on December 25 and of Hamas number two Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut on January 2, a senior Hezbollah commander was in turn the target of an Israeli strike on Monday, January 8. The attack occurred in Khirbet Selm, a town in southern Lebanon 15 kilometers from the border with Israel. Unknown to the general public, Wissam Tawil was one of the most experienced leaders of the highly secretive Radwan elite force.
In photos circulated by Hezbollah after his death, the 48-year-old Lebanese man smiles discreetly, next to the Shiite movement's leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Others show him in the field with Imad Mughniyeh, the Hezbollah military chief eliminated by Israel in 2008 in Damascus, and Mustafa Badreddine, whom he assisted in Syria until his assassination in Damascus in 2016. He also rubbed shoulders with Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian general in charge of the Revolutionary Guards' external operations, killed in Baghdad in 2020 in an American strike.
Tawil was one of the commandos who infiltrated Israel on July 12, 2006 and captured two soldiers, triggering a 34-day war against Israel. In March 2023, he led an unprecedented infiltration operation from Lebanon by a suicide bomber who detonated his explosive charge at the Megiddo junction in Galilee, leaving one man seriously injured. From the start of the conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, he commanded "special operations" against Israeli posts along the border, according to Hezbollah.
Taking out the leaders of the Radwan unit is a priority in Israeli military circles. This preoccupation goes back long before the attack on October 7. On that day, Hamas's elite Al-Nukhba force applied Radwan's "manual" – the strategy it had devised to infiltrate Israel and strike at the heart of Israel – to the letter. For the past two years, Hezbollah has been openly threatening Israel with an invasion, through its propaganda clips and even in a full-scale exercise staged in front of an audience of journalists in southern Lebanon in May 2023. At the end of 2018, Israel discovered tunnels dug on the border.
"The conquest of Galilee" has been the unit's raison d'être since its creation by Imad Mughniyeh after the 2006 war. The unit took on the nickname of the military strategist, "al-Hajj Radwan," after his assassination in the Syrian capital in February 2008, in an attack attributed to Mossad. The Radwan force has become Hassan Nasrallah's signature weapon and the keystone of Hezbollah's deterrent capability against Israel, with its highly sophisticated arsenal. The secrecy surrounding its existence was lifted in 2014, but its fighters continue to operate clandestinely, concealed under a black hood. They number between 2,500, according to Israeli sources, and 10,000, according to Hezbollah media.
You have 60% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.