Elite units are making short intelligence raids in preparation for a ground invasion, says The Wall Street Journal.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
IDF forces are already secretly in Lebanon, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
Elite units have been making short intelligence raids for weeks and even months, the paper said, in anticipation of acting on the necessity of permanently removing the Hezbollah terrorist organization from the border via a ground invasion.
Their probes have included terror tunnels built by Hezbollah right up to Israel’s northern border, dug to enable its specialized Radwan force to invade the Galilee much as Hamas did on October 7, which sparked the ongoing war in Gaza.
It is the fear of such a future invasion that has led some 60,000 residents of the north to say that they will refuse to return home until the threat is nullified.
They have been internal refugees for nearly a year, with their lives in limbo ever since they were evacuated from their homes after Hezbollah immediately began launching thousands of rockets, missiles, and UAVs over the border to support Hamas.
“The IDF has made a lot of preparations for a ground incursion,” former senior military official Amir Avivi told the paper. “Overall, this always includes special operations. This is part of the process.”
It is still not certain when, and even if, the ground operation will commence, as the U.S. is putting heavy pressure on Israel not to enter full force.
The Biden administration has been very forthright about its fear that this could lead to a regional war that included Iran, since Hezbollah is its most important terror proxy and Tehran has promised to help defend it from Israel.
Various American government spokesmen have stated for weeks that the U.S. believes diplomacy can still work to de-escalate the volatile situation, even as Israel has ramped up its bombing of Hezbollah sites and senior personnel, including the assassination Friday of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
President Joe Biden said Sunday that he would soon be speaking to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because “we really have to avoid” what he called “an all-out war” in the Middle East.
“We’re working like hell with the French and many others to avoid [more] war,” he told reporters.
Most of Israel’s government and legislators, including from the Opposition, believe that now is the time to deal a very heavy, if not fatal blow to the terrorist group, up to and including holding onto a strip of Lebanese territory to ensure that Hezbollah cannot threaten the north as it as done for decades.
The IDF has had immense success in recent weeks in decapitating Hezbollah’s military and political leadership, seriously damaging its communication network, and destroying thousands of missile launchers and tens of thousands of rockets.
Last week alone, the air force hit over 2,000 targets in Lebanon, keeping up the relentless pressure.
It came along with a clear threat to invade, as Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Herzi Halevi told some of the thousands of troops that Israel has brought northward in the last several days, who are now training for this scenario.
“We are preparing the process of a maneuver, which means your military boots, your maneuvering boots, will enter enemy territory,” he said.