Hizbullah tunnels under border

Concerns are mounting in the defense establishment that Hizbullah may be digging tunnels from Lebanon to Israel to attack a border community or IDF outpost.

While the IDF has been worried that Hizbullah will try to kidnap soldiers – as it has done twice in the past – the latest fears surround the possibility that terrorists will cross into Israel through tunnels, enter a border community like Shlomi and barricade themselves inside a home with civilians.

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In addition, there is concern that Hizbullah will use these tunnels to plant explosives underneath and next to IDF posts. This tactic was used successfully in 2004 by Hamas, which detonated an explosives tunnel under an IDF outpost in southern Gaza, killing five soldiers.

Army commanders deployed along the border worry that a future Hizbullah strike would involve not only rocket and mortar fire, as the IDF projects, but also a simultaneous attack aimed at both kidnapping a soldier and infiltrating a border community.

Last week, Israel declassified, for the first time, intelligence regarding Hizbullah positions inside villages in southern Lebanon, pinpointing the locations of bunkers, command posts and arms caches.

In response, a top Hizbullah official warned on Sunday that the Shi’ite group had a list of targets in Israel that it was prepared to attack with its missiles in the event of a new conflict.

While Israel does not believe that Hizbullah is currently interested in war, it is concerned that the group is still planning to avenge the 2008 assassination of its military commander Imad Mughniyeh in Syria.

Last week, the Counter-Terrorism Bureau issued a general travel advisory warning Israelis worldwide to maintain a high level of alertness out of fear that Hizbullah may try to kidnap Israeli civilians, specifically businessmen.