Hezbollah has moved arsenal into 100s of civilian villages — Hezbollah showcases vast military infrastructure in southern Lebanon
The Israel Project
Variations of this story have been bouncing around for the last few weeks. Two weeks ago there were major recent pieces in the NYT and AP articles, where journalists got to look at IDF aerial photography showing that Hezbollah has moved the vast majority of its military infrastructure into Shiite villages [1][2]. They’ve taken their arsenal – 100,000+ rockets including Burkan rockets with half-ton warheads, ballistic missiles including Scud-Ds that can hit all of Israel, supersonic advanced anti-ship cruise missiles, anti-aircraft assets, drones and mini drones, tunnels, etc. – and embedded it across hundreds of villianges and probably thousands of homes.
The Syrian war has been good for Hezbollah in that respect. They’ve cleaned out Assad’s depots and brought the goods back to Lebanon.
The Israelis can’t afford a war of attrition with Hezbollah. The Iran-backed terror group has the ability to saturation bomb Israeli civilians with 1,500 projectiles a day, every day, for over two months. They will try to bring down Tel Aviv’s skyscrapers with ballistic missiles. They will try to fly suicide drones into Israel’s nuclear reactor. They will try to detonate Israel’s off-shore energy infrastructure. They will try to destroy Israeli military and civilian runways. And – mainly but not exclusively through their tunnels – they will try to overrun Israeli towns and drag away women and children as hostages. Israeli casualties would range in the thousands to tens of thousands.
And so the Israelis will have to mobilize massive force to shorten the duration of a future war. One of the things they’ll do is immediately is move to eliminate as much of Hezbollah’s vast arsenal as possible. Hezbollah is counting on the resulting deaths of their human shields – and they’ve guaranteed to that the body count will be significant – to turn Israel into an international pariah. But the Israelis can’t let Hezbollah level their entire country with indiscriminate rocket fire and advanced missiles, just because no one in Lebanon is willing or able to expel the group from Shiite villages.
This weekend’s round of stories actually came from Hezbollah’s side. As-Safir – a Lebanese daily and a major Hezbollah mouthpiece – published a series of puff pieces about how Hezbollah has turned all of southern Lebanon into a vast military complex. I’ve pasted the full AP/TOI write-up at the bottom, but it’s what you’d expect:
According to the reports, based on a tour of Hezbollah facilities given to the newspaper, the group has built a sprawling underground array of tunnels, bunkers and surveillance outposts along the border with Israel, which it is manning at peak readiness for battle. The tunnels are said to be highly-advanced, with durable concrete, a 24-hour power supply via underground generators, a ventilation system to prevent damp from damaging military equipment and a web of secondary escape shafts in case of attack. The tunnels are said to be housing tens of thousands of rockets ready for launch, themselves wrapped in protective materials in order to preserve them.
None of this is new. In early 2013 veteran Israeli war correspondent Ron Ben-Yishai did a deep dive into Hezbollah military posture [3]. He revealed among other things that Hezbollah had given away thousands of homes to poor Shiite families, on the condition “that at least one rocket launcher would be placed in one of the house’s rooms or in the basement, along with a number of rockets, which will be fired at predetermined targets in Israel when the order is given.” Then in 2014 air force chief Major-General Amir Eshel gave a speech outlining how Hezbollah has embedded its military assets in “thousands” of residential buildings, emphasizing that Israel would have no choice but to target that infrastructure in a war. Reuters picked up the speech under the headline “Hoping to deter Hezbollah, Israel threatens Lebanese civilians” [4].
But there’s a lot of chatter in the Middle East about a summer war between Israel and Lebanon, so you’re seeing a new round of stories about what it might look like. On one hand the Israelis and Hezbollah are saying the same thing: all of southern Lebanon is now one big military compound. But only the Israelis are pointing out that Hezbollah has made sure that in that compound there are tens of thousands of civilians.
Omri.
412-512-7256
@cerenomri
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[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/
[2] http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/
[3] http://www.ynetnews.com/
[4] http://www.reuters.com/
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Hezbollah shows off ‘advanced tunnel network’ on Israeli border
Terror group has built a sophisticated underground infrastructure from which to strike in future conflict, Lebanese paper reports
Hezbollah has built a vast network of advanced tunnels along the border with Israel for use in a future war, using them to conceal tens of thousands of rockets aimed at the Jewish state, a Lebanese newspaper with ties to the Lebanese terror group reported on Friday.
In a series of articles published over the weekend, the daily As-safir examined Hezbollah’s preparations for war against Israel, painting a picture of a military force highly prepared for conflict, both in terms of equipment and of infrastructure.
It should be noted that As-safir, a mouthpiece for the Shiite organization, is neither an objective nor necessarily a credible news source. The accuracy of its claims cannot be verified.
According to the reports, based on a tour of Hezbollah facilities given to the newspaper, the group has built a sprawling underground array of tunnels, bunkers and surveillance outposts along the border with Israel, which it is manning at peak readiness for battle.
The tunnels are said to be highly-advanced, with durable concrete, a 24-hour power supply via underground generators, a ventilation system to prevent damp from damaging military equipment and a web of secondary escape shafts in case of attack. The tunnels are said to be housing tens of thousands of rockets ready for launch, themselves wrapped in protective materials in order to preserve them.
The paper reported that Hezbollah was constantly surveying the Israeli border area with electronic equipment as well as observation posts equipped with night-vision technology.
Tunnel construction was said to be continuing around the clock, using primitive means rather than advanced machinery in order to avoid detection by Israeli surveillance.
A senior Israeli intelligence official said last week that Hezbollah has built up a massive arsenal of rockets and other advanced weapons in Shi’ite villages of southern Lebanon, warning civilians would be at risk if war breaks out.
According to the official, Hezbollah has an estimated 100,000 short-range rockets capable of striking northern Israel, several thousand missiles that can reach Tel Aviv and central Israel and hundreds more that can strike the entire country.
Most of the weapons have been transferred to Lebanon through war-torn Syria, coming from Hezbollah’s key allies, the Syrian government and Iran, he said.
The official showed reporters satellite photos of what Israeli intelligence believes are Hezbollah positions in dozens of Shiite villages in southern Lebanon.
The photos were marked with dozens of red icons, signaling what are believed to be missile launchers, arms depots, underground tunnels and command posts.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity under military guidelines, said an estimated 200 villages have been turned into “military strongholds.”
One photo showed the village of Muhaybib, with a population of around 1,000 people and 90 buildings, of which more than a third had been marked as Hezbollah assets. In the larger village of Shaqra, with some 4,000 people, Israeli intelligence identified Hezbollah targets in around 400 out of some 1,200 buildings.
The army refused to allow publication of the images.
If war breaks out and Hezbollah fires missiles at Israel, these buildings will be targeted by Israel’s air force, the official said, adding that Israel would give civilians time to evacuate.
Israel and Hezbollah fought a month-long war in 2006 that killed some 1,200 Lebanese, including hundreds of civilians, and 160 Israelis and caused heavy damage to Lebanon’s infrastructure.
Though another Israel-Hezbollah war is always possible, analysts say the group has no interest in renewing hostilities while it is busy fighting alongside President Bashar Assad’s forces against rebels trying to topple him in Syria, including the forces of Islamic State.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned Friday that the Islamic State posed an existential threat to Lebanon and said his organization may soon be required to call for a general mobilization to fight the group.
“Now is the time for everyone to enlist, anyone who can take part,” Nasrallah told senior organization commanders in a speech. “The danger that threatens us is an existential threat similar to 1982,” he added, referring to the Lebanon War and the Israeli military invasion of Lebanon.
The Hezbollah chief vowed to “use all our strength and all our capabilities to cope with extremist groups.
“In the next phase we may declare general mobilization to all people,” he said.
Israel fails yet again to protect itself diplomatically. The enemy is openly preparing to commit genocide of Israel and Israel is silent. Obama should also be confronted over his silence. Israel should announce that it will use the American firebombing of German and Japanese cities as a precedent. Those cities were not military targets and posed no threat to America. Israel has far more right to wipe out southern Lebanon because it is a mortal threat and the U.S. allowed the enemy missile build up.
Their New Enemy and far more dangerous is ISIS. Human Shields, will not help them this time. ISIS does not care who or what you are, it just kills.