Hezbollah prevented Lebanese authorities in Beirut from inspecting two suspicious vehicles allegedly carrying weapons until after the group diverted and emptied their contents, according to several Lebanese media reports. The incident reportedly occurred on January 23 in the Tayouneh neighborhood, a major traffic junction straddling the political-sectarian fault line between the Lebanese capital’s Hezbollah-dominated southern Shiite suburbs and its predominantly Christian neighborhoods. These reports undermine recent claims by the Lebanese government that Hezbollah’s disarmament is well underway.
According to MTV Lebanon and Beirut Time, two Lebanese media outlets with an anti-Hezbollah orientation, a patrol belonging to the Internal Security Forces (ISF) Judicial Police Unit’s Office for Combating International Theft Crimes became suspicious after observing two unmarked Toyota freight trucks with tinted windows parked for some time opposite the Lebanese Armed Forces barracks at Tayouneh Junction. The patrol, having obtained authorization from Lebanese authorities, approached the two vehicles, intending to detain and inspect them. Quoting unnamed “security officials,” Al Jadeed, a TV station sometimes sympathetic to Hezbollah, claimed the vehicles were two Toyota sedans, not trucks.
At that point, several young men—either Hezbollah operatives or, per Al Jadeed, the group’s supporters “from the neighborhood’s residents”—converged upon the patrol and attempted to assault them. The young men threatened the Lebanese officers and prevented them from detaining the two vehicles.
After that, Hezbollah operatives reportedly forcibly extracted the two vehicles and removed them toward Hezbollah’s de facto security zone in Dahiyeh’s Shiyyah neighborhood. The Hezbollah operatives also allegedly detained one of the patrol’s members, identified by MTV Lebanon only by his initials “ZY,” for 20 minutes. Subsequently, Hezbollah reportedly released the Lebanese officer from its custody.
At that point, Lebanese security forces called for military reinforcements. This development, the reports claim, led Ali Ayyoub, a Hezbollah Security Committee member in Dahiyeh, to head to the Tayyouneh Police station and negotiate with Lebanese authorities. Various reports have previously described Ayyoub as an aide to Wafic Safa, the head of Hezbollah’s Liaison and Coordination Unit.
Ayyoub’s negotiations reportedly concluded with a promise on behalf of Hezbollah to surrender the two trucks to the ISF. According to MTV Lebanon, the two trucks were handed over to Lebanese authorities “only afterwards—meaning, after they were changed, switched out, and emptied [of their cargo].” Al Jadeed reports claim this handover occurred “almost two hours later.” Beirut Time claims to have learned (without specifying from whom) that the two trucks were transporting weapons from Hezbollah’s former arsenal in Syria and had recently entered Lebanon through one of the many unauthorized crossings on the Lebanon-Syria border.
Relatedly, at 9:04 pm on January 21, several Israeli airstrikes targeted positions on the Lebanon-Syria border opposite Hermel in northeast Lebanon. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) subsequently released a statement claiming to have targeted four border crossings that Hezbollah used to smuggle weapons. Al Jadeed claims that after the two vehicles were detained by Lebanese authorities, they were transferred to the Ali Shahrour Lot in Ouzai.
Unnamed “sources close to Hezbollah” denied this version of events to Al Jadeed, alleging “that the reports are entirely disconnected from what actually occurred.” These sources additionally denied that the two vehicles belonged to Hezbollah at all, claiming that the “two illegal vehicles were parked near Tayyouneh Junction, and words were exchanged between the vehicles’ owners and security forces after the latter tried to seize the vehicles—an incident which concluded with their seizure.”
Hezbollah and Lebanese authorities, including the ISF, have yet to release any official statements on the incident, either confirming or denying its occurrence or details. MTV Lebanon, reporting on January 26, said that Lebanese authorities had not detained any of those involved in the event, and Lebanon’s judicial system “has neither questioned nor pursued any of the perpetrators.” However, Al Jadeed’s report, purporting to quote official Lebanese sources, claimed that “the incident was now in the hands of the relevant [Lebanese] security agencies.”