‘TA residents won’t be sitting in cafés in any next war’
Future rounds will be more challenging, warns head of Home Front Command
Residents of Tel Aviv will not be able to enjoy sitting in cafés during the next war, the IDF Home Front Command head said on Wednesday, warning that “This is a thing of the past.”
“In the next war in Gaza or on the northern front, Tel Aviv residents won’t be able to drink their coffee [outside],” Maj.-Gen. Tamir Yadai said at a conference for the heads of local authorities.
“In 2019, there will be a more complex and challenging threat to Israel. Along with the capabilities that we are familiar with, there is another geostrategic reality which presents us with new challenges and threats,” Yadai said at the conference.
“There is no dispute that the threat to the Israeli home front in the next war will be very challenging, especially in being able to ensure essential services for the civilian population and the resilience of Israeli society,” said Yadai, explaining that the intensity of the next war is something that Israel would not be prepared for.
Hezbollah is known to have rebuilt its arsenal since the 2006 Second Lebanon War, with at least 100,000 shortrange rockets and several thousand more missiles that can now reach central Israel, including Tel Aviv.
On the southern front, Hamas is believed to have at least 10,000 rockets and mortar shells, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad is said to have around 8,000 rockets and mortars shells.
While Hezbollah has never fired on Tel Aviv, rockets launched by Hamas and Islamic Jihad have reached Israel’s commercial center in the past.
According to Yadai, Israel will also have to cope with the evacuation of thousands of residents away from front lines.
“The Middle East is organized differently. There is a possibility of launching military campaigns on both the northern and the southern fronts, since we are aware of coordinated attempts,” he said, adding that attempts to infiltrate into Israel as well as new cyber capabilities used by Israel’s enemies are expected in any future conflict.
Since the founding of the state, Israel has never carried out a mandatory evacuation of any community, but in addition to the threat posed by Hezbollah rocket barrages, the IDF is now concerned about the possibility of ground attacks by the terrorist group’s Radwan unit against civilian border communities.
With close to one million Israelis living in the North, an estimated 250,000 people would be evacuated from 22 communities along the border, in case a war should break out with Hezbollah.
Several thousand residents living in communities bordering the Gaza Strip are also expected to be evacuated in the next war with Hamas and other terrorist groups in the coastal enclave.