Hezbollah begins distributing aid to those displaced by war

Hezbollah on Monday announced it had begun distributing financial aid to Lebanese displaced by the group's latest war with Israel, despite efforts to dry up its funding sources.

The aid is being provided despite U.S. economic sanctions on Hezbollah backer Iran, and Lebanese authorities tightening controls over the group's channels for obtaining money and weapons, as part of their declared campaign to disarm the group.

Hezbollah announced in a statement that it had begun paying a first tranche of aid to displaced people in the Nabatieh region of southern Lebanon.

It is an act of "loyalty to the owners of the destroyed homes," the group said.

On October 13, Hezbollah had announced that it would provide housing-related financial assistance capped at $14,000 per year for the displaced.

The aid is earmarked for people whose homes have been completely destroyed or rendered uninhabitable, and for residents of Israeli-occupied areas in the south, provided that the displaced have no other place to live.

Hezbollah had said it would distribute the aid in four installments over one year, without specifying the source of the funding or the number of beneficiaries.

The aid announcement was the first from Hezbollah since it drew Lebanon into a new war with Israel on March 2 in support of Iran, which the U.S. and Israel attacked on February 28.

In December 2024, after an earlier war against Israel in support of Hamas in Gaza, it announced similar assistance worth $77 million to the displaced, describing it as a "a gift from the Iranian people and Hezbollah."

The wars waged by Hezbollah against Israel since 2023 have damaged or destroyed more than 290,000 homes, according to provisional figures from the authorities, particularly in the south of the country and in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Violence has decreased in the south since June, following a memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran and a framework agreement between Lebanon and Israel, which includes the disarmament of Hezbollah.