Israel grappling with tribal threats at home and abroad
AS THEY say in the Israeli intelligence community, in order to see into the future, one has to first penetrate the fog of the present. And the consensus right now is that the fog is very thick in the Middle East.
Today, a primordial soup of jihadi terror groups, “pragmatic” Sunni fighters, and Shia militias are ignoring traditional sectarian divides and signing desperate pacts in southern Syria. Israel appears to be on the point of signing a breakthrough deal with a collection of Sunni Arab states.
As Major General Herzi Halevi, Chief of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, told the Herzliya Conference on Wednesday: “It’s not just that the rules of the game are changing. The pieces on the board are changing, too.”
Amid this uncertainty and blurring lines, however, one threat has remained constant and clear: Hizbollah. Although the Shia outfit gained a new, damaging brief at the outset of the Syrian war — to protect Iranian assets to the east — it is still as busy as ever using its operational channels in Syria to bring new, more sophisticated weaponry into Lebanon, where it is deployed in preparation for war with Israel.
But the 100,000 missiles positioned in the Galil and Golan, and Hizbollah’s growing battle experience, are only part of the growing threat posed by the terror group.
The Shia organisation has been bringing Iranian military commanders ever closer to the Israeli border, and it is a commonly held IDF view that Israel will eventually see entire Iranian Revolutionary Guards battalions from their Golan observation points.
Maj Gen Halevi issued a clear warning to Hizbollah. He said: “If Nasrallah knew what we know [about their preparations], he would not take the risk. Never before has an army known as much about its enemy as we know about Hizbollah. If there is another war, Israel will recover and rebuild. We are a strong, advanced society. Lebanon will become a country of refugees… Hizbollah will lose its political support.”
He added that Syria’s military-industrial sector had resumed producing weapons for Hizbollah, and stressed that these weapons were also destined for use against Israel.
Mr Halevi said Israel would have to “grapple with” the jihadi threat in the medium term. He warned that a successful major attack on Israel by a group such as Daesh would whet jihadi appetites for more such assaults.
“They have been successful in arousing a high level of commitment from their foot soldiers. Their English pamphlets and videos… are extremely effective.”
However, the former head of Israel’s National Security Council, Uzi Arad, told the conference that Israel’s primary strategic challenge lay inside its borders.
“The strategic challenge of our time is to identify our strategic challenge, then make a change,” he said.
In Mr Arad’s view, Israel’s various “tribal” interest groups — the Charedim, the national religious camp, the Israeli Arabs — were threatening longterm security by battling each other and creating instability.
The result, he said, was a government in thrall to small segments of the population, and a weaker, less unified Israel in the long term.
DRAPED ALONG the edge of a hill overlooking the Hula Valley, the Israeli village of Metula occupies what appears to be an inadvisable position.
Just 300 yards from its community hall, past the security fence marking the border with Lebanon to the north, flutters a yellow Hizbollah flag.
“It was not planted as a military act,” says Sarit Zehavi, who served in the IDF Northern Command’s intelligence unit for 14 years. “Hizbollah stopped marking its positions with flags after the 2006 war. It was more of a gesture, just to tell the Israelis that it is alive and kicking.”
Still, if the residents of Metula squint into their binoculars they may be able to spot the odd Hizbollah operative, identifiable by the fact they are carrying a weapon.
There are very few other visible signs of the Shia army, whose members no longer wear uniforms when active near the Israeli border. “They are a highly professional army, and have learnt a lot. We say that Hizbollah is the teacher and Hamas is the student,” said Mrs Zehavi.
Although there have been only 20 incidents involving Hizbollah since 2006, Israeli military planners are keen to stress that the Shia force remains the most significant threat to Israel.
“The biggest danger we face is the mix of Hizbollah and an Iranian artillery corps on our northern border. It is the most lethal combination of capability and intent. We are not just talking about employment but deployment,” said Assaf Orion, a former head of strategic planning in the IDF.
The widespread IDF view is that Hizbollah does not want a war now. Mrs Zehavi insisted, however, that “they are willing to take their chances if they get an opportunity… Hizbollah has 5,000 troops in the Galil. They could try to take Metula for just a few hours.”
From a lookout above Metula, three Lebanese villages are visible. Each contains several houses that have been designated by Hizbollah as rocket silos, with Iranian-made Fajr-5s stored “in or under” residential buildings.
Mrs Zehavi said: “Some of the villages are effectively military compounds, but people still live there. The reason why many don’t leave is mixed. Sometimes they believe they are protected by God, sometimes they believe Hizbo ll ah when they say the Israelis will never attack. For others, it’s the fear that they will end up homeless like their cousins in Syria.”
To the east, across the Hula Valley and over the Golan Heights, in the foothills of Mount Hermon, the threats are less urgent, although no less severe.
Tel Saki, the fortified mound where 28 IDF troops hid out and were eventually saved during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, is only half a mile from the border with Syria.
Standing on the hillock, a huge plume of black smoke — likely to have been caused by an air strike, according to Mrs Zehavi — can be seen on the near horizon.
The area immediately beyond the border is held by the Yarmouk Martyrs’ Brigade, an affiliate of Daesh. Just beyond them is a strip controlled by another jihadi group, the Al Qaeda offshoot, Jabhat al-Nusra.
Further into Hauran — the volcanic plateau in southern Syria that includes the eastern side of the Golan Heights -— are the Free Syrian Army, then another area held by Jabhat al-Nusra. Beyond them again are Daesh, who are being pushed south following defeats against the Assad regime.
A senior military source said that these rival groups now appear to be settling down, consolidating their territory and even signing treaties and pacts.
“There is a stability arising on the other side of the Syrian border,” he said.
For now, with Hizbollah fully engaged in battling the many Sunni armies, and the multitude of warring rebel and jihadi groups still preoccupied with each other, Israel is in a shortterm sweet spot.
Few Israeli military experts believe that this will last into the medium term, however.
The IDF source said: “Hizbollah is the major threat on the northern border, also because it brings the threat of the radical axis [Iran and its other proxies]. The global jihad will turn to Israel later, when they have time.”