Israel launches an operation to destroy tunnels by Hezbollah on the border with Lebanon

The Israeli Army has launched in the early hours of Thursday a large-scale military operation to destroy tunnels in an attack said to have discovered on the border with Lebanon. The statement in the military that announces the call Operation Shield of the North attributed to the excavation of subterranean passages to the guerrilla shiite Hezbollah, with which Israel maintained an open war for 33 days in the summer of 2006 that killed 1,200 lebanese and 165 israelis.

MORE INFORMATION

Israel undertakes the largest maneuvers in the border of Lebanon since 1998, A Spanish falls under israeli fire,

The drums of war are again heard in the upper Galilee. A few hours earlier, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had met in Brussels on Monday night with the u.s. secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, to inform you about the alleged rearmament of Hezbollah with missiles of accuracy sent by Iran, which is already reported to the General Assembly of the UN on 27 September. According to information disseminated by state television, israeli, Israel has asked Washington to convey to the Government of Beirut, which, if not stopped, supplies weapons to Hezbollah, Israel will act militarily. Netanyahu has called on the afternoon of Tuesday the Security Cabinet, a body of the Executive for the israeli who decides on war-fighting activities.

The military operation announced by the spokespersons of the israeli Armed Forces has as its goal the destruction of several tunnels that penetrate from Lebanon, whose number has not been clarified, in an action that will be executed “within the territory of Israel” and without crossing in any point the border. The passages, which were not yet finalised, are golden of emergency exits, electricity generators, and ventilation systems. The Army released a picture of a subway from the town lebanese from Kafar Kela, which will be the first to be crushed. The Army has sent many reinforcements to the north of the Galilee, and has declared it a “closed military area” border towns like Metulla, which is located in the same separation limit. The reserve units have not been by now mobilised. The civilian population has not received instructions about a possible state of alert around the called Blue Line, the border that divides the two countries along 130 kilometres of walls, fences and barbed wire fences.

“We are prepared for any eventuality,” said a spokesman for military. “The tunnels to attack cross-border, which have been discovered by the Army before they could be in service pose a threat to the security of the israeli civilian population and constitute a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of Israel.” After more than seven years of involvement in the war in Syria as an ally of the regime in Damascus, Hezbollah guerrillas has become a powerful force tanned in combat with more than 20,000 soldiers and 25,000 reservists. The military arm of the Party of God, founded after the israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, has in its arsenals with more than 100,000 rockets of different range, according to the military intelligence services of Israel.

This picture released by Hezbollah shows several soldiers iraelíes digging in the border. AP

The general staff considers that Hezbollah began to design with the means and funding of the Tehran underground Makrobet structures after the 2006 war. He also argues that the passages discovered after at least four years of unsuccessful searches have their origin in inhabited areas, which poses a grave danger to the civilian population of southern Lebanon. The militia lebanese proiraní has shared information with Hamas, the islamist movement that controls the Gaza strip since more than a decade ago, on the techniques of excavation of tunnels. Colonel in the reserve Atal Shelach, former head of the unit of Engineers responsible for the destruction of the underground outlined yesterday to the press that while “Hamas uses the tunnels for tactical operations, Hezbollah uses them for strategic purposes”.

The israeli military has reinforced the border in recent months, with high cement walls, which has caused the protest of the Government of Beirut for his alleged plots of lebanese territory. The israeli Government accountable to the lebanese authorities on everything that happens within their country, while acknowledging that the lebanese Army does not control in fact the southern border. Both countries are still technically at war since 12 years ago and maintained a territorial dispute in so-called Farms of Sheba, border zone next to the Golan heights syrians under israeli occupation.

a border Territory in dispute

Israel accuses in addition to Hezbollah for violating resolution 1701 of the Security Council of the UN, which unanimously approved a cease-fire after the 2006 war, and increased the deployment of a force of international in the south of lebanon up to 10.800 ‘blue helmets’. Spain deployed more than 600 soldiers next to the israeli border within the UNIFIL, the interposition force of the United Nations. It is the military contingent more numerous on the outside. January 28, 2015, an artillery shell fired by Israel during a clash with Hezbollah took the life out Javier Soria Toledo.

After the demolition of the past September 17, a Russian plane IL-20 reconnaissance in Syria Israel has lost freedom of action to attack in the arab country, while Iran seems to have been obliged to divert to Lebanon shipments for the rearmament of its allies in Hezbollah. The aircraft Russian was returning to its base near Latakia, on the mediterranean coast of Syria, when it was hit by missiles syrians that were repelling an israeli air attack. The death of the 15 occupants of the apparatus was qualified of “criminal negligence” by the Ministry of Defence of Moscow, to estimate that Israel had not informed with sufficient time and accuracy on the operation.

Amos Harel, military analyst of the newspaper Haaretz that the president Vladimir Putin's attempts to stabilize the regime in Damascus before the conflict's end, and it has banned both iranian and as israelis continue to face in syrian territory. “Netanyahu has now sent signals to Iran and Hezbollah through the united STATES, and perhaps also of France, that they must act before you decide to resort to force,” he concludes. The announcement of the operation against the tunnels on the northern border is a clear notice also that the scenario of the clashes between Israel and its irreconcilable enemies shiites are moving to Lebanon.