As the bombs and rockets fell silent this week, Lebanon’s ministries began assessing the damage inflicted by a month-long Israeli offensive. But Hizbollah, the Shia militant group that had relentlessly battled Israeli troops, was not waiting for government decisions.

Giving its weapons a rest, it moved faster than the state, marshalling its own network of services to help the battered and the displaced, the vast majority of them from Lebanon’s Shia community.