Israeli General Says Hizbullah Threat Greater than Gaza
Hizbullah is more dangerous than militant groups operating in the Gaza Strip, an Israeli army general said, expressing belief that the party has dug tunnels across the border from Lebanon in preparation for any future war with the Jewish State.
As a result of the greater threat from Hizbullah and in the event of a future conflict, the Israeli army will have to take “many more decisive acts and employ much more power” than it did in Gaza, Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan, commander of Israeli forces on the Lebanese and Syrian fronts, told Army Radio on Wednesday.
Golan said Hizbullah, which has sent its fighters to Syria to help the regime of President Bashar Assad against the rebels, was unlikely to seek a renewed conflict with Israel.
If a war took place, then the Jewish state would hit Lebanese targets hard. However, it would also suffer from a Hizbullah rocket arsenal believed to be 10 times more potent than Hamas', he said.
About the suspected tunnels, he told Army Radio: "We have no positive information.”
"That said, this idea of going below ground is not foreign to Lebanon and is not foreign to Hizbullah and so we have to suppose as a working assumption that there are tunnels. These have to be looked for and prepared for."
Addressing the threat posed by Hizbullah’s arsenal, Golan said Israelis need to understand that the army “will not be able to provide the same umbrella (air defenses) that it provided in the south by the Iron Dome” anti-missile defense system.
“I assess that we will be able to intercept mainly the rockets and heavy missiles, and less the regular rockets. The biggest challenge regarding the Israeli home front at the moment is to explain that a clash in the North will not look like a clash in the South. There will be many more hits to the home front,” he said.
"We and Hizbullah are conducting a kind of mutual-deterrence balance," Golan added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier this week that the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon was incapable of implementing its mission in accordance with Security Council Resolution 1701.
He told the Knesset that the peacekeepers' mandate to stop Hizbullah's arsenal from growing was not successful.
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