With the bodies of its fighters strewn on the battlefield, Hiz-bollah must bury its dead and provide succour to its supporters who bore the brunt of Israel's offensive, as the first steps on a long and costly road to recovery.
Hizbollah believes the number of its fighters killed during 14 months of hostilities could reach several thousand, with the vast majority killed since Israel went on the offensive in September, three sources familiar with its operations say.
Lebanese authorities have said some 3,800 people were killed in the current hostilities.
Hizbollah is still reeling from the killing of its former leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and its supporters made homeless en masse by the carpet bombing of Beirut's southern suburbs and the destruction of villages in the south.
With a ceasefire taking hold on Wednesday, Hizbollah's agenda includes, according to three other sources familiar with the group's thinking:
WORKING to re-establish its organisational structure fully;
PROBING security breaches that helped Israel land so many painful blows; and,
A FULL review of the last year, including its mistakes in underestimating Israel's technological capabilities.
For this story, Reuters spoke to a dozen people who together provided details of some of the challenges facing Hizbollah as it seeks to pick itself up after the war.
Hassan Fadlallah, a senior Hizbollah politician, said the priority will be "the people".
"To shelter them, to remove the rubble, to bid farewell to the martyrs and, in the next phase, to rebuild."
Hawraa, a woman from south Lebanon with family members who fight for Hizbollah, said: "I have a brother who was martyred, a brother-in-law who was wounded in the pager attacks, and my neighbours and relatives are all either martyrs, wounded or missing."
The Israeli offensive displaced more than one million people, the bulk of them from areas where Hizbollah has sway.
A senior Leban-ese official familiar with Hizbollah thinking expected the group to carry out a wide-ranging policy review, dealing with all major issues: Israel, its weapons and the internal politics of Lebanon, where its weapons have long been a point of conflict.
Iran, which established Hizbollah in 1982, has promised to help with reconstruction. The World Bank estimates US$2.8 billion in damage to housing in Lebanon, with 99,000 homes partially or fully destroyed.
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a close Hizbollah ally, is urging wealthy Lebanese Shias in the diaspora to send funds to help the displaced, two Lebanese officials said.
Hizbollah has indicated it intends to keep its arms, dashing hopes of Lebanese adversaries who predicted the pressures generated by the war would
finally lead it to hand them to the state.
Hizbollah officials have said the resistance, widely understood to mean its armed status, will continue.
Hizbollah opened fire in support of Palestinian ally Hamas on Oct 8, 2023.
Israel went on the offensive against the group in September, declaring the aim of securing the return of 60,000 people evacuated from homes in the north.
Despite the resulting devastation, Fadlallah said the resistance put up by its fighters in south Lebanon and the group's intensified rocket salvoes towards the end of the conflict showed Israel had failed.
The ceasefire terms agreed by Israel and Lebanon require Hizbollah to have no military presence in an area between the Israeli border and the Litani River, which meets the Mediterranean Sea some 30km from the frontier.
Israel complains Hizbollah, which is deeply rooted in south Lebanon, never implemented the same terms when they agreed to end a previous war in 2006.
Andreas Krieg of King's College in London said Hizbollah
had retained considerable capability.
The performance of its "core infantry fighters in southern Lebanon and rocket attacks deep into Israeli territory in recent days showed the group was still very, very capable", he said.
The group has made no secret of the military and financial support it gets from Iran.
The writers are from Reuters