Tel Aviv on front lines in next war, Israel’s Home Front Commander Warns

Israel’s Home Front Commander said people in Tel Aviv would not be able to enjoy life as usual in the next war. 

By World Israel News Staff

General Tamir Yadai, head of Israel’s Home Front Command, issued a frightening warning to Israel’s citizens at a conference in Ashkelon on Wednesday, according to Israel’s Mako website.

The days are past, Gen. Yadai said, when “we’ll be fighting in the North or in Gaza,” and folks will be “drinking coffee in Tel Aviv.”

“No one’s arguing that the threat on the Israeli home front in the coming war will be very challenging,” he said.

“In 2019, there exists a more complex and challenging threat to Israel, together with capabilities already known to us from the past,” he said. “There is another geo-strategic reality that presents us with other challenges and threats.”

Although Tel Aviv and Israel’s central region have been relatively untouched by Hamas rocket fire and incendiary bombs over the last eight months of hostilities, Hamas rocket capabilities have clearly improved since Israel’s last incursion into the Gaza Strip during Operation Protective Edge in July-August 2014.

Though only guesstimates, Israeli citizens in the south living under the rocket fire say the rockets are at least five times more powerful than what they remembered from four years ago.

From the north, Israel faces a still greater threat. Hezbollah is considered the world’s strongest non-state actor, fielding a medium-sized army and a large arsenal of rockets estimated at around 130,000.