From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, October 1, 2024
IDF: 3,000 terrorists were waiting to attack north after Oct. 7; special forces carried out 70 raids on Hezbollah since then
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
As the Israel Defense Forces officially launched ground operations in southern Lebanon early this morning, the military is now disclosing that it has already carried out more than 70 small raids with special forces since the beginning of the war, destroying numerous Hezbollah positions, tunnels, and thousands of weapons that would have potentially been used by the terror group to invade Israel.
According to the IDF, troops in the raids over past months silently reached around 1,000 Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon, some of them several kilometers from the border fence, including tunnels and bunkers where the terror group stored weapons. The IDF said the sites were located both inside Lebanese villages and in forested areas.
The raids have been carried out since early in the Israel-Hamas war, after the IDF said it managed to push back Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force from the border area, enabling Israeli commandos to enter Lebanon with almost no detection. There were no direct clashes with Hezbollah operatives amid any of the raids.
According to IDF assessments, some 2,400 Radwan terrorists and another 500 Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists — trained by Radwan — were waiting in southern Lebanon villages to attack Israel in the days after Hamas’s October 7 onslaught.
The IDF Northern Command had expected an invasion from Lebanon and bolstered its defenses. In the following weeks, it carried out numerous strikes on Hezbollah operatives and sites along the border, causing the thousands of Radwan terrorists to withdraw several kilometers back.
The raids carried out by the IDF commandos, including combat engineers, sometimes lasted three to four days, according to the military. In all, 200 nights’ worth of operations had been carried out.
The military showed reporters dozens of weapons, including assault rifles, machine guns, RPGs, anti-tank missiles, explosive devices, mines, mortars, and equipment such as walkie-talkies (which did not explode) that had been recovered by the commandos from within Hezbollah tunnels and bunkers.
Military officials said that the recovered weapons were less than 1 percent of what had been found in the Hezbollah sites. Practically, it was difficult for the soldiers to lug back dozens of heavy weapons back to the country through the difficult terrain, but some soldiers still took on the challenge.
The IDF identified that while its commando operations were successful, it was not enough to be able to achieve the newest of Israel’s war goals — enabling the return of the displaced residents of the north to their homes.
Therefore, the IDF launched what it described as “limited, localized, and targeted raids” in southern Lebanon, carried out by an entire division, with the goal of demolishing Hezbollah’s infrastructure in the border area.
The operation has much of the same goals as the commando raids, but now the army can be less silent with its activities, and destroy tunnel networks and other sites that normally can’t be carried out by small forces that are operating quietly. Previously, the IDF would strike the raided Hezbollah sites from the air after troops had withdrawn.
Military officials have said they aim for the offensive to be as short as possible, even just a few weeks. There has been no intention by the IDF to remain in southern Lebanon, but instead, it plans to bolster its defenses and surveillance on the border following the ground operation against the terror group, and make sure Hezbollah does not return to the area.
The IDF sees a chance that its strikes on Hezbollah, killing its entire top leadership, could lead to a power balance change in Lebanon, with the government regaining control of areas in the country, especially the south, from the hands of the Iran-backed group.
Still, the IDF has assessed that Hezbollah still possesses rocket and missile fire capabilities, highlighted by this morning’s barrage on central Israel in which two people were wounded. Military officials said the army does not aim to “drain the ocean” and destroy every last rocket, but will work to disarm the terror group as much as possible.
