Israeli troops discover Hezbollah’s largest tunnel yet

Israel is afraid Hezbollah is refocusing on Israel as fighting in Syria winds down

Israeli troops discovered the sixth and final tunnel dug by Hezbollah militants for cross-border attacks, the military announced on Sunday, saying it was wrapping up its operation along the Lebanese border.

Military spokesperson Lt Col Jonathan Conricus said the final tunnel was the largest one discovered so far, running hundreds of metres (yards) from under a Lebanese home and deep into Israeli territory. Israel launched “Operation Northern Shield” early last month to detect and destroy what it called a vast network of Hezbollah tunnels aimed for militants to sneak across the border and carry out attacks.

Mr Conricus said the latest tunnel originated from the Lebanese border town of Ramyeh. He said it was 55m deep and ran 800m inside Lebanese territory and also “dozens” of metres into Israel. It included stairs, a rail system and a wide a passageway that allowed for the movement of equipment and a large number of forces.

The tunnel would be destroyed in the coming days, Mr Conricus said, adding that while more tunnels still existed on the Lebanese side of the border, this effectively marked the end of the ambitious military operation.

“We have achieved the goal that we set out to achieve a month and a half ago,” he said. “According to our intelligence, there are no longer any cross-border attack tunnels into Israel.”

Israel and the United Nations say the tunnels violate a cease-fire resolution that ended a devastating war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006. Mr Conricus says the UN peacekeeping mission, United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil), had been updated on the latest development.

In the wake of its discoveries, Israel has asked the international community to impose tough sanctions on Hezbollah and begin to act against its state-within-a-state operation in Lebanon.

The military said its forces would stay deployed along the border area to monitor for any other possible underground activity, and said it holds the Lebanese government responsible for everything happening in its territory.

The powerful Shia militant group Hezbollah, which acts independently in Lebanon, has yet to comment on the Israeli discoveries.

Israel has long called for a crackdown on the Iran-backed Hezbollah, a heavily armed mini-army that is believed to possess an arsenal of some 150,000 rockets that can reach nearly all of Israel. In recent years, Hezbollah has been bogged down in fighting in Syria on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad’s government. But with that civil war winding down, Israeli security officials fear Hezbollah is refocusing its attention on Israel.

News of the operation’s conclusion comes in the final week of Israel’s outgoing military chief Lt Gen Gadi Eisenkot’s four-year tenure. The latest discovery, coupled with a weekend strike attributed to Israel against suspected Iranian and Hezbollah sites near the Damascus International airport, was perceived in Israeli media as Eisenkot’s “parting shot” as he left office.

He gave a series on interviews over the weekend summarising his term and focusing on shifting the Israeli military’s attention towards Iran directly instead of just engaging its lesser proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. In a New York Times interview published on Friday Eisenkot said that Israel “has struck thousands of targets without claiming responsibility or asking for credit” as part of a shadow showdown with Qassim Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force.

Eisenkot also revealed that the government approved his shift in strategy in January 2017, stepping up airstrikes in Syria. In 2018 alone, he said Israel’s air force dropped 2,000 bombs in Syria.

Associated Press