IDF: Hezbollah storing weapons in cache 25 meters from a school

the israeli military on wednesday shared intelligence of a possible target belonging to hezbollah in the southern lebanese village of ebba in the nabatieh Governorate.

according to the idF, the terrorist group is storing rockets, military-grade explosives and other weapons in a residential building just 25 m. from a school with 300 students.

the explosion of the warehouse would be half the size of the Beirut explosion of last year that killed at least 211 people and badly damaged a large part of the city.

the idF hopes that with the disclosure, the group will remove the weapons from the building.

But should the group keep the weapons there, “the idF will not hesitate” to destroy

nations that will harness innovation for the future of the people of the country and the region. The people of the region are hoping for a new, prosperous Middle East.”

Herzog said that “seeing the Emirati flag flying in Tel Aviv may have seemed like a farfetched dream a year ago.”

However, the president added, “nothing can be more natural or more normal,” because Israelis and Emiratis have so much in common.

“We are deeply rooted in our land, with eyes on the stars. We are building modern states out of desert sands, and made the impossible possible,” Herzog said.

The location of the ceremony at the TASE was fitting because of economic ties between the nations, he added.

“With people-to-people dialogue, both of our cultures will be enriched,” the president said.

Herzog thanked UAE leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for their work on bringing the two nations together, and emphasized the former’s “opening the door to a warm friendship between our peoples.”

SLOVAKIA Continued from Page 1

Jerusalem.

But its government has since changed, as has that of the United States and Israel. President Joe Biden has not prioritized international recognition of Jerusalem as had his predecessor.

But then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressed forward on the issue, with former foreign minister Gabi Ashkenazi raising the matter with his Slovakian counterpart, Ivan Korcok. Foreign Minister Yair Lapid also spoke to Korcok about it.

On Wednesday, the Slovakian foreign minister fixed the date for the opening of the diplomatic mission.

“Slovakia is deepening relations with #Israel by opening the Slovak Institute in #Jerusalem on September 1, 2021,” Korcok tweeted.

He was careful to underscore,

however, his country’s commitment to a two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on the pre-1967 lines, which would place the Palestinian capital in east Jerusalem.

Slovakia “continues to support the resumption of Middle East Peace Process & 2-state solution in line w/ international law,” he tweeted.

His announcement came just two days after Lapid returned from Brussels, where he met with the European Union Foreign Affairs Council, which is a gathering of foreign ministers that included Korcok as well.

Lapid tweeted Korcok’s announcement with the line, “Thank you minister @IvanKorcok for your important decision to open the Slovak Institute in Jerusalem.

“This step is a symbol of your friendship and it will serve to strengthen the relations between our countries,” he added.

Since the US Embassy relocation in 2018, only three other countries have placed their embassies in Jerusalem: Guatemala, Honduras and Kosovo.

Equatorial Guinea and Malawi have also pledged to open embassies in Jerusalem. The Czech Republic and Hungary have already given a nod in that direction by opening diplomatic offices in Jerusalem, both of which are seen as branches of the Tel Aviv embassies.

The Hungarian, Czech and Slovakian moves are contrary to EU policy, which opposes any action on Jerusalem prior to a final-status agreement for a two-state resolution to the conflict.

Israel, has also gained extensive operational experience.

Most of the group’s thousands of operatives have returned to south Lebanon, and the military views them as a significant threat to communities along the border. Radwan operatives are expected to be at the forefront of any Hezbollah attack against Israel, infiltrating into Israeli communities along the border to kill as many civilians and troops as possible, accompanied by a massive barrage of rockets, mortars, anti-tank missiles, and more.

Israel has been building an upgraded border security fence, but due to financial constraints it has completed only several kilometers of the concrete barrier along the Lebanese border.

The rest of the border is a fence that was originally built in the 1980s, and though the military becomes aware of breaches in the fence, which allows troops to quickly get to the scene, senior officers have admitted that it would not stop infiltrations by Radwan operatives.

Due to the threat of infiltrations by Hezbollah, some 22 Israeli communities along the border with Lebanon will be evacuated when a war breaks out. But the IDF is aware that any evacuation of northern communities will have to be organized and not fall on citizens to carry out at their own cost.

TWO YEARS ago, the IDF launched Operation Northern Shield to discover and destroy all cross-border tunnels dug by Hezbollah into northern Israel. It said that it found and destroyed six such tunnels. The destruction of the tunnels was a significant hit to the group, and it hasn’t tried to rebuild them since.

But even if that one strategic surprise was thwarted, Israeli officials have warned that any war that breaks out in the North will not be confined to one border like it was 15 years ago in Lebanon, but with southern Syria as well, where Hezbollah has entrenched itself on the Golan Heights.

The IDF is also concerned that rocket fire might also come from Iraq as well as from the Gaza Strip.

And should war break out, the military knows that it will not be able to rely solely on the air force, but will need to use its ground troops to neutralize Hezbollah and its capabilities in villages in south Lebanon.

“The fire from the air will be powerful in the first hours of the fighting. But to defeat the enemy at the operational stage, we will need a land maneuver,” said 36th Division Commander Brig.-Gen. Dan Noyman.

But the IDF hasn’t conducted a full and proper ground maneuver in enemy territory since troops entered Gaza in 2009 during Operation Cast Lead – and Lebanon’s topography gives Hezbollah the advantage

over Israel.

The military knows it has to train its troops and officers, many of whom have not experienced combat, and has carried out numerous large-scale drills to test the readiness of battalions in the North for aggressive maneuvering deep inside enemy territory.

After three years of work, all of the IDF’s operational plans for a war in the North are in the final stages. And with the training, in addition to new techniques and advanced intelligence capabilities, Baram is confident in the IDF.

The IDF is “preparing surprises for Hezbollah,” Baram says, and while the next war will be “complex,” with damage to infrastructure as well as civilian and troop casualties, it will be “unbearable” for the terrorist group.

“Our message to Hezbollah: In the next campaign, you will face a more trained, deadly and determined army than ever before,” he warned.

MANY OF Hezbollah’s capabilities and infrastructure are intertwined with the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon. And though Israel refrained from striking Lebanese infrastructure during the Second Lebanon War, Israeli officials have warned repeatedly that the next war will cause unbelievable destruction to the country.

Lebanon is currently suffering from an economic crisis that the World Bank says is one of the world’s worst financial crises since the 1850s. Violence and protests have broken out around the country, as basic services collapse.

According to a recent assessment released by UNICEF, some 77% of Lebanese households don’t have enough money to buy food. The country’s medicine importers have warned that they have run out of hundreds of essential drugs, and electricity outages and gas shortages are commonplace.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that UNICEF has started giving cash handouts in US dollars to the families of some 70,000 Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian children at risk of “child labor, early marriage or exclusion from schooling” due to the crisis.

The Lebanese Armed Force is also feeling the economic crisis, with troops earning only $400-$500 a month. The LAF

has even announced it is offering tourists helicopter rides for $150 to make money.

The Israeli military has been monitoring the situation and is ready to deploy reinforcements to its northern border should Hezbollah use it to attack Israel. Nevertheless, the IDF believes that Nasrallah is too concerned with internal issues to begin a war with the Jewish state.

SCHOOL

it, warned OC Northern Command Maj.-Gen. Amir Baram.

“Hezbollah consistently uses civilian assets as an operational tactic for military activity,” Baram said, adding that “the IDF and the Northern Command will take all measures to reduce harm to civilians, and yet the IDF will not hesitate to destroy active targets.”

The building is one of the thousands of targets the IDF has gathered over the years, including weapons warehouses and military infrastructure belonging to Hezbollah in the heart of residential and urban areas.

Using innovative intelligence and advanced technology, the IDF’s target bank in the Northern Command is 20 times larger than the target bank the military had in 2006, with thousands of targets ready to be attacked, including headquarters, strategic assets and weapons storehouses.

A report released last year by the ALMA Research and Education Center found that there are at least 28 missile launching sites belonging to Hezbollah in civilian areas in the Lebanese capital of Beirut.

The report found that the never-before-published sites concentrated mainly in Hezbollah-dominated areas of Beirut are related to the launch, storage and production of the group’s Fateh 110/M600 medium-range missiles, and are “the same as those subject to the Hezbollah precision-guided missile project (PGM’s).”

The sites, which also included locations of command and control infrastructure, missile assembly, rocket fuel storage sites, and missile bunkers, were found next to high schools, clinics, hospitals, golf clubs, soccer fields as well as the Iranian Embassy and Lebanese Ministry of Defense.

“Almost all of the sites are in southern Beirut, an area controlled by Hezbollah, and are located in civilian neighborhoods, inside private houses, medical centers, churches, industrial sites, public offices, fast food chains, as well as in open spaces nearby, hence activating the ‘human shield’ tactic,” the report read.