Inside a well-furnished apartment in a village on the outskirts of Tyre, with shelves of books piled from floor to ceiling, a black turbaned cleric and three men sit sipping bitter coffee. By the door is a pile of Kalashnikovs and ammunition boxes; handguns are tucked into the men's trousers. The four are Hezbollah fighters, waiting for the Israelis.
"Patience is our main virtue, we can wait for days, weeks, months before we attack. The Israelis are always impatient in battle and in strategy," says the cleric, Sayed Ali, who claims to be a descendant of the prophet. "I know them very well."
As if to make his point, the sound of Israeli shells blasting the surrounding hills shakes the door and shutters every few minutes. Ali does know the Israelis. He started fighting them at the age of 17 when they invaded Lebanon in 1982. Three years later he was arrested with two of his comrades and spent a few months in an Israeli prison.
Within weeks of his release he was fighting them again. That's what he did for the next six years.
For the last five years he has been finishing his theology studies in Tehran. A month ago, he was asked by Hezbollah to return to southern Lebanon. He arrived a week before the fighting began.
Standing at the window, he points to the banana plantations between us and the Mediterranean.
"I have fought for years in these groves. We used to sit and wait for them [the Israelis] to make a move and then we would hit. They always moved too quickly, too soon," he says.
All over the hills of south Lebanon hundreds of men like Sayed Ali and his comrades are waiting -- some in bunkers, some in farm houses -- for the Israeli troops to arrive. Sayed Ali and his men spend most of their time in the building where his apartment is, moving only at night.
"We stay put and we don't move till we get our orders, and this is why we are not like any other militia. A militiaman will fire whenever he likes at whatever he likes," explains one of the men, who says he has been involved in firing Katyusha rockets into northern Israel.
"We have specific orders," he says. "Even when we fire rockets we know when and where [to fire] and each of the men manning the launchers runs to a specific hiding place after firing the rockets."
He says Hezbollah fighters expect the site of a rocket launch to be hit by an Israeli airstrike or shell within 10 to 15 minutes.
Another of the men, who says he is Sayed Ali's brother, explains how Hezbollah teaches its fighters patience.
"During our training we spend days in empty buildings without talking to anyone or doing anything. They tell me go and sit in that building, and I go and sit there and wait," he says.
hospitals
According to Ali, Hezbollah operates as "a state within the state," with its own hospitals, social organizations and social security system.
"But we are also an Islamic resistance movement, an indoctrinated army," he says. "I would go and knock at the door of someone and say we need US$50,000, he would give me [that] because they trust us."
The organization's fighting force is divided into two: the "active" group, whose task is to serve in Hezbollah, and the reserve, or Ta'abi'a, as it is known in Arabic. The active fighters get monthly pay. The reserves are called on only in time of war, and receive bonuses but no regular pay. A third section, the Ansar, comprises people who support or are supported by the organization.
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