2024-08-20 19:39:31
After Hezbollah’s recent video showing footage of its network of tunnels and underground facilities, experts said the lessons Israel has learned from the Gaza tunnel war are valuable, but also that Hezbollah’s underground facilities ” will become more and more threatening, the Israeli news agency TPS reported.
“We have gained enormous experience in Gaza, dealing with complex underground threats,” Prof. Utzi Rabi, director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University, told TPS.
“Unlike the Gaza Strip, which is a plain with sandy soil, Lebanon is covered in rocks and is an extremely mountainous area, with forested areas in many places,” Rabi said. “We are talking about tunnels 40-80 meters deep, built under solid rock… This is very different from Gaza.” Also, he added, Hezbollah’s tunnels were built with the help of Iran and North Korea and were significantly better constructed.
“This war has given them an idea of how the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operates against underground tunnel systems,” Rabi said, adding that Hezbollah is also learning and taking lessons from the Gaza tunnel war. However, Tal Berry, head of research at the Alma Center for Research and Education, said Israel’s biggest fear – “a full-scale invasion through tunnels – is unlikely” because since October 7 Israel has been on heightened alert on standby.
“Instead, Hezbollah is probably considering a more targeted operation in a specific area in Israel,” Berry said. “From what we saw on October 7 with Hamas, the tunnels are not even a necessity to launch an invasion.” If Israeli forces enter Lebanon, Hezbollah’s tactical and logistical tunnels throughout the country will pose more risks to troops than in Gaza. “We are talking about the land of tunnels in Lebanon. There are tactical tunnels all over the country”.
The prospect of cross-border tunnels, as well as Hezbollah’s presence so close to the border, has northern Israelis on alert. Matan Davidian, a father of four from Shlomi, said that even if the daily rocket fire from Hezbollah stopped, he would not feel safe returning home.
“Our request to the state of Israel is simply not to return to the situation before October 7, when terrorists were in close proximity and waiting to cross the border,” said Davidian, who is staying at a hotel in Jerusalem. “We are fully aware that there are Hezbollah attack tunnels in the area and that they are waiting to attack us, as Hamas did on October 7,” Davidian said. “Without some sort of ground operation to push them out of the border and destroy the tunnels, there’s no way my family is going back there.”
Nearly 80,000 Israelis were forced to evacuate their homes near the border with Lebanon when Hezbollah began firing rockets and drones in October. Hezbollah leaders said they would continue the attacks to prevent Israelis from returning to their homes. The attacks killed 26 civilians and 19 Israeli soldiers.
Israeli officials are calling for Hezbollah to be disarmed and removed from southern Lebanon in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the Second Lebanon War in 2006. In December 2018, Israel uncovered six Hezbollah attack tunnels penetrating Israeli territory, built with the support of North Korea and Iran. These tunnels were built despite the continued presence in southern Lebanon of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.
According to a 2021 Alma Center report, Hezbollah’s national tunnel network is modeled after the North Korean model, which includes both attack tunnels and logistical infrastructure tunnels criss-crossing Lebanon. This network includes underground command and control rooms, weapons and supply depots, field clinics and even special shafts used to launch missiles and projectiles of all kinds, including anti-aircraft missiles, the report said.
According to Rabi, Hezbollah’s tunnel network was established even before the Second Lebanon War in 2006, and the terrorist group is constantly upgrading it. Hezbollah has learned a lot about geology, construction techniques and so on. Now that the group is building tunnels, they are harder to detect, much more complex and significantly more resistant to bunker bombs,” Rabi said.
He added that it is Hezbollah’s doctrine to store its underground resources in civilian areas. “That’s how they protect themselves from Israeli air power. So the only way to deal with something like this is a ground invasion, which puts a conventional army like the IDF at a disadvantage because it’s fighting on its enemy’s territory. It’s a whole other city , built underground”.
“Today we face this challenge with a huge, probably unprecedented amount of knowledge about underground warfare. We enter this war with a lot of experience,” he noted, quoted by BTA.