After the Second Lebanon War, Hezbollah, with the help of experts from North Korea and Iran, established a large network of tunnels that, according to Lebanese officials, is bigger than the Hamas “metro” in the Gaza Strip and some of them penetrate 10 km into Israeli territory. The tunnels are not only offensive, some of them were expanded in order for trucks and vehicles to be able to drive through them, transfer weapons, missiles and evade the Israeli army, should it penetrate into southern Lebanon.
The popular Saudi newspaper “Al-Sharq Al-Awast” wrote a big article about Hezbollah’s tunnel project – according to the investigation – Hezbollah has a huge network of tunnels that it has been digging for years, both as a defense against attacks by the Israeli Air Force and as offensive tunnels intended for military forces to penetrate the northern settlements of Israel on the day of command.
The French newspaper “Liberation” also published this year that Hezbollah has a secret tunnel network of hundreds of kilometers, which is even bigger than Hamas’ tunnel network in the Gaza Strip. The depth of the tunnels reaches up to 80 meters. Due to the geological characteristics of South Lebanon, the Hezbollah men advanced over about 40 years of work of varying intensity to a distance of about 15 meters a month.
Indeed, in January 2019, he located six attack tunnels from Lebanon to Israeli territory. The IDF did indeed destroy the tunnels, but since then, Hezbollah has continued to dig and dig a huge network of tunnels.
The Alma Institute has been focusing since its establishment (2018) on the security challenges of the State of Israel on the northern border, and one of its main fields of activity is the Hezbollah tunnel project.
Tal Bari (52), head of the center’s research department and who himself researched and coordinated the center’s comprehensive work on Hezbollah’s tunnels in Lebanon, says that these are “hundreds of kilometers of underground that were cut in hard rock – more dangerous, deeper, wider and more difficult to crack and the destruction of everything we were exposed to in Gaza in recent months.”
According to the Alma Institute, since 2006, Hezbollah has placed emphasis on the development of a network of tunnels that connects – along tens of kilometers – the Beirut area (central headquarters) and the Bekaa (logistic operative hinterland) with southern Lebanon. These tunnels are apparently equipped with short-range Fatah 110 rockets made in Iran, and even ballistic missiles.
In a report published by Alma several months ago, explosive tunnels were mentioned, which are sealed on one side and are capable of collapsing a tunnel on its occupants, or causing landslides.
Brigadier General (ret.) Ronen Manelis is also impressed that the tunnel system is “ten levels above what we encountered in Gaza”. Menelis, who was also the spokesman for the IDF, served as head of the Lebanon branch of the Northern Command and commander of the Gaza division and even served as assistant to Chief of Staff Gadi Izenkot in the two years preceding the “Northern Shield” (2018) – the operation in which six offensive terrorist tunnels penetrating the fence, which Hezbollah dug from Lebanon into Israeli territory, were exposed and destroyed.
Hezbollah officials and Lebanese officials claim that the huge network of tunnels balances Israel’s air superiority advantage and that the tunnel strategy is one of Hezbollah’s strongest cards against Israel. and through them also cause the IDF to suffer many casualties, in the event of a ground entry into southern Lebanon.
According to all the signs and information, the rivers are only a small part of a much wider picture, which took shape there over 18 years; The period of time when Israel almost did not act against the land of tunnels that Hezbollah built in Lebanon.
The one who speaks in a more optimistic tone about the challenge of the Lebanese tunnels is Major General (Ret.) Yaakov Amidror, formerly the head of the Military Intelligence Service, the head of the research division at the AMN and the military secretary of the Minister of Defense. “Unlike the war in Gaza,” says Amidror, “the IDF comes to the challenge of the Hezbollah tunnels with a lot of experience in tunnel warfare. Today’s IDF is probably the army with the most experience fighting in tunnels in the world. Therefore, even if there is a tactical surprise somewhere, for example a tunnel that we don’t know about, we will deal with the problem with a lot of experience. This is already a fundamentally different situation from the surprise in this field that we fell into At the beginning of the war in Gaza.”
It is possible that the publications are inflated, since those who apparently passed the information to the French and Saudi newspaper, are sources who had an interest in passing on this information that would be a psychological deterrent to Israel from occupying southern Lebanon during the escalation period. But it is likely that the estimates are closer to reality and Israel will know how to hit Hezbollah through the state of Lebanon, mainly through the air. A part of the Lebanese army may survive underground, but Lebanon itself will be destroyed and the pressure on it from the citizens will be great.
