Israel has stepped on the accelerator in recent hours, focusing all its military efforts on the northern front amid an unprecedented spiral of violence that left 492 dead in Lebanon on Monday. In what appears to be a leap into a new stage of war, the government and army have shown themselves determined to destroy Hezbollah’s infrastructure and surround its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who they see increasingly isolated as his lieutenants are killed. At the same time, the Jewish state has thousands of soldiers ready for a possible ground invasion by the neighbouring country. The latest Israeli movements reveal that the army has decided to adopt with the Lebanese civilian population the same strategy developed in Gaza since the conflict began on October 7. Through telephone warnings, leaflet launching, media and social networks, they are urged to leave their places of residence, something that thousands of families did on Monday to avoid being considered targets of the bombs. The Lebanese government has announced an emergency plan to pay attention to them.
Until a ceasefire agreement is reached, and one is not in sight, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are trying at all costs to push back the Shiite party-militia forces that are deployed closer to Israeli territory. The objective, for which they have been reinforcing the northern front for weeks with troops arriving from Gaza, is twofold. On the one hand, to make it more difficult for them to attack the northernmost communities in Israel. On the other, to prevent them from carrying out ground skirmishes or even an invasion similar to the one Hamas achieved on October 7 from Gaza.
This is how Lieutenant Colonel Yarden (who prefers that his last name not be published) explains it during a conversation on-line He spoke with several journalists on Sunday evening from his post on the border. At that time, Israeli fighter planes were preparing to launch the biggest offensive of the current conflict against its northern neighbor. Israel is especially flexing its muscles from the air, but this soldier warns that they are ready to launch a ground invasion immediately.
“We have several highly trained and highly motivated offensive divisions that are ready, willing and capable of carrying out that mission,” he said, although he acknowledged that it is the government that must give the final go-ahead. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can order it at any time.
The airstrike on Monday is the prelude to a new phase of the conflict, said the head of the Israeli Armed Forces, General Herzi Halevi, adding that he would soon provide more details on the matter. “We are attacking targets and preparing for the next phases,” he said, referring to the bombings to try to destroy the infrastructure built up by Hezbollah in the last two decades, after the last major war, in the summer of 2006. The prelude has been a previous week of attacks with dozens of deaths after the explosion of hundreds of Hezbollah personal communication systems (pagers and search engines). walkie-talkies), attributed to the Israeli secret services, and an air attack against a number two of the militia.
“Over the past day, we have been demolishing what Hezbollah has been building for the past 20 years. Nasrallah remains alone at the top. Entire units of Radwan (the militia’s special forces) were removed from the battle and tens of thousands of rockets have been destroyed,” said Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
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Meanwhile, in the mountains along the border, the military forces are preparing for a possible order to assault by land. “We have a lot of troops concentrated on the border, ready for the government to make a decision on whether we need to launch a large ground operation,” the lieutenant colonel told reporters. Over the past month, he said, a significant part of the troops that were deployed in Gaza have been moved north in the face of increased tension and the possible order to invade, which would come from the political, not the military, establishment.
“If during the height of the fighting in the Strip there were five divisions operating there, today there are only two divisions in the south. Those other three divisions have not evaporated. They are training, resting and preparing for any mission that the government asks the army to carry out in the northern theater,” he adds, without wanting to offer details, but those three divisions are no less than 15,000 troops.
Even without the need for this raid, the number of victims has skyrocketed in recent hours in Lebanon due to the air strikes. On Monday alone, the death toll rose to more than 490, dozens of them women and children, and more than 1,600 wounded in different regions of the country. It was the deadliest day in the Arab country since the end of the civil war in 1990.
Hezbollah, for its part, does not have an air force, but it has launched dozens of missiles in an attempt to show that it still has the arsenal to unsettle the enemy. For the first time in the current conflict, some of them hit the West Bank on Monday after flying more than 100 kilometres without being intercepted. No fatalities were reported in Israel. Haifa Bay, some 30 kilometres from the border, was illuminated as night fell on Monday amid constant activity by the Israeli anti-aircraft system in response to the firing of projectiles by the Lebanese Shiite militia.
As the bombing storm loomed, the Israeli army issued warnings to Lebanese civilians on Monday to stay away from militants, installations and any other place that might be in Hezbollah hands. Thousands of families have formed long caravans to escape the bombs while Beirut authorities announced a national emergency plan to deal with the displaced.
In recent hours, Israel has provided what it considers evidence, some of which are videos, that the militia is using civilian infrastructure to carry out attacks and is holding the population hostage. Benjamin Netanyahu himself warned of this in a message he sent to them on Monday evening, in which he stressed that the Lebanese people, despite Monday’s death toll, are not the target.
“There are about 100,000 Lebanese who have fled [del entorno de la frontera con Israel] “Because Hezbollah uses their villages, including mosques, hospitals, clinics or schools as places to launch rockets and missiles against Israeli civilians,” says the lieutenant colonel, convinced that the militants are holding the country “hostage.” He is also convinced that “they were planning to invade northern Israel” with “their elite forces,” says this veteran reservist who has been deployed since the beginning of the war in the sector closest to the Mediterranean coast of the Lebanese border, one of the places where tension has soared in recent days.
On the Israeli side, there are about 60,000 evacuees due to the conflict. “We are committed to bringing our citizens back to their homes. And that will happen when there is an agreement. That agreement can happen now or it could happen after a major ground operation,” explains Yarden. He warns: “We have seen the kind of destruction and damage that has taken place in the Gaza Strip; I hope the Lebanese people take that into account.” The military officer sums up the current situation as follows: “There is much less fighting in Gaza,” where what remains “for the most part is a kind of guerrilla war. There are a lot of forces in the north, with me, oriented towards Lebanon,” he concludes.
