TEL AVIV: Israeli forces have spent much of the past year destroying Hamas’ vast underground network in Gaza. They are now focused on dismantling tunnels and other hideouts belonging to Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon.
Scarred by Hamas’ deadly raid into Israel last year that sparked the war in Gaza, Israel says it aims to prevent a similar incursion across its northern border from ever getting off the ground.
The Israeli military has combed through the dense brush of southern Lebanon for the past two weeks, uncovering what it says are Hezbollah’s deep attack capabilities — highlighted by a tunnel system equipped with weapons caches and rocket launchers that Israel says pose a direct threat to nearby communities.
Israel’s war against the Iran-backed militant group stretches far inside Lebanon, and its airstrikes in recent weeks have killed more than 1,700 people, about a quarter of whom were women and children, according to local health authorities. But its ground campaign has centered on a narrow patch of land just along the border, where Hezbollah has had a longstanding presence.
Hezbollah has deep ties to southern Lebanon
Hezbollah, which has called for Israel’s destruction, is the Arab world’s most significant paramilitary force. It began firing rockets into Israel a day after Hamas’ attack. After nearly a year of tit-for-tat fighting with Hezbollah, Israel launched its ground invasion into southern Lebanon on Oct. 1 and has since sent thousands of troops into the rugged terrain.
Even as it continues to bolster its forces, Israel says its invasion consists of “limited, localized and targeted ground raids” that are meant to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure so that tens of thousands of displaced Israelis can return home. The fighting also has uprooted more than 1 million Lebanese in the past month.
Many residents of southern Lebanon are supporters of the group and benefit from its social outreach. Though most fled the area months ago, they widely see the heavily armed Hezbollah as their defender, especially as the US-backed Lebanese army does not have suitable weapons to protect them from any Israeli incursion.
That broad support has allowed Hezbollah to establish “a military infrastructure for itself” within the villages, said Eva J. Koulouriotis, a political analyst specialized in the Middle East and Islamic militant groups. The Israeli military says it has found weapons within homes and buildings in the villages.
Hezbollah built a network of tunnels in multiple areas of Lebanon
With Israel’s air power far outstripping Hezbollah’s defenses, the militant group has turned to underground tunnels as a way to elude Israeli drones and jets. Experts say Hezbollah’s tunnels are not limited to the south.
“It’s a land of tunnels,” said Tal Beeri, who studies Hezbollah as director of research at The Alma Research and Education Center, a think tank with a focus on northern Israel’s security.
Koulouriotis said tunnels stretch under the southern suburbs of Beirut, where Hezbollah’s command and control are located and where it keeps a stockpile of strategic missiles. She said the group also maintains tunnels along the border with Syria, which it uses to smuggle weapons and other supplies from Iran into Lebanon.
Southern Lebanon is where Hezbollah maintains tunnels to store missiles — and from where it can launch them, Koulouriotis said. Some of the more than 50 Israelis killed by Hezbollah over the past year were hit by anti-tank missiles.
In contrast to the tunnels dug out by Hamas in the sandy coastal terrain of Gaza, Hezbollah’s tunnels in southern Lebanon were carved into solid rock, a feat that likely required time, money, machinery and expertise.
An Israeli military official said that using prior intelligence, Israel had found “hundreds and hundreds and hundreds” of underground positions, many of which could hold about ten fighters and were stocked with rations. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military rules, said troops were blowing up the tunnels found or using cement to make them unusable.
The group used tunnels during the monthlong 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, but the network has been expanded since, even as a United Nations ceasefire resolution compelled Lebanese and UN forces to keep Hezbollah fighters out of the south.
In mid-August, Hezbollah released a video showing what appeared to be a cavernous underground tunnel large enough for trucks loaded with missiles to drive through. Hezbollah operatives were also seen riding motorcycles inside the illuminated tunnel, named Imad-4 after the group’s late military commander, Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in Syria in 2008 in an explosion blamed on Israel.
Hezbollah’s tunnels could be hindering Israel’s mission
Israeli troops are pushing through southern Lebanon using tanks and engineering equipment, and air and ground forces have struck thousands of targets in the area since the invasion began.
The military recently said it found one cross-border tunnel that stretched just a few meters into Israel but did not have an opening. Israel also exposed a tunnel shaft that was located about 100 meters (yards) from a UN peacekeepers ‘ post, although it wasn’t clear what the precise purpose of that tunnel was.
Israel says the tunnels are stocked with supplies and weapons and are outfitted with lighting, ventilation and sometimes plumbing, indicating they could be used for long stays. It says it has arrested several Hezbollah fighters hiding inside, including three on Tuesday who were said to have been found armed. The Israeli military official said many Hezbollah fighters appear to have withdrawn from the area.
Lebanese military expert, Naji Malaeb, a retired brigadier general, said he assessed that Hezbollah’s tunnels were preventing Israel from making major gains. He compared that achievement to the war in Gaza, where Hamas has used its tunnels to bedevil Israeli forces and stage insurgency-like attacks.
Israeli authorities insist the mission in Lebanon is succeeding. It says it has killed hundreds of Hezbollah fighters since the ground operation in Lebanon began, though at least 15 Israeli soldiers have been killed during that time.
Israel has encountered Hezbollah’s tunnels before. In 2018, Israel launched an operation to destroy what is said were attack tunnels that crossed into Israeli territory. Beeri said that six tunnels were discovered, including one that was 1 kilometer (1,000 yards) long and 80 meters (87 yards) deep, crossing some 50 meters (yards) into Israel.
Israel believes Hezbollah was planning an Oct. 7-style invasion
For Israel, the tunnels are evidence that Hezbollah planned what Israel says would be a bloody offensive against communities in the north.
“Hezbollah has openly declared that it plans to carry out its own Oct. 7 massacre on Israel’s northern border, on an even larger scale,” Israeli military spokesman Rear. Adm. Daniel Hagari said the day troops entered Lebanon.
Israel has not released evidence that any such attack was imminent but has expressed concern that one might be launched once residents return.
Former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by Israel last month while in an underground bunker, had signaled in speeches that Hezbollah could launch an attack on northern Israel.
In May 2023, just months before Hamas’ attack, Hezbollah staged a simulation of an incursion into northern Israel with rifle-toting militants on motorcycles bursting through a mock border fence bedecked with Israeli flags.
Hezbollah officials have at times framed calls for an attack against Israel as a defensive measure that would be taken in times of war.
Israel unearths Hezbollah’s web of tunnels in southern Lebanon
https://arab.news/p9rc7
Israel unearths Hezbollah’s web of tunnels in southern Lebanon
- The Israeli military has combed through the dense brush of southern Lebanon for the past two weeks
- Airstrikes in recent weeks have killed more than 1,700 people, uprooted more than 1 million Lebanese in the past month
Defiant Lebanese harvest olives in the shadow of war
- A World Bank report this month said that “the disruption of the olive harvest caused by bombing and displacement is expected to lead to $58 million in losses” in Lebanon
KFEIR: On a mountain slope in south Lebanon, agricultural worker Assaad Al-Taqi is busy picking olives, undeterred by the roar of Israeli warplanes overhead.
This year, he is collecting the harvest against the backdrop of the raging Israel-Hezbollah war.
He works in the village of Kfeir, just a few kilometers (miles) from where Israeli bombardment has devastated much of south Lebanon since Israel escalated its campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah in September.
“But I’m not afraid of the shelling,” Taqi said, as he and other workers hit the tree branches with sticks, sending showers of olives tumbling down into jute bags.
“Our presence here is an act of defiance,” the 51-year-old said, but also noting that the olive “is the tree of peace.”
Kfeir is nine kilometers (six miles) from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, in the mixed Christian and Druze district of Hasbaya, which has largely been spared the violence that has wracked nearby Hezbollah strongholds.
But even Hasbaya’s relative tranquillity was shattered last month when three journalists were killed in an Israeli strike on a complex where they were sleeping.
Israel and Hezbollah had previously exchanged cross-border fire for almost a year over the Gaza conflict.
The workers in Kfeir rest in the shade of the olive trees, some 900 meters (3,000 feet) above sea level on the slopes of Mount Hermon, which overlooks an area where Lebanese, Syrian and Israeli-held territory meet.
They have been toiling in relative peace since dawn, interrupted only by sonic booms from Israeli jets breaking the sound barrier and the sight of smoke rising on the horizon from strikes on a south Lebanon border village.
Hassna Hammad, 48, who was among those picking olives, said the agricultural work was her livelihood.
“We aren’t afraid, we’re used to it,” she said of the war.
But “we are afraid for our brothers impacted by the conflict,” she added, referring to the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese displaced by the fighting.
Elsewhere in south Lebanon, olive trees are bulging with fruit that nobody will pick, after villagers fled Israeli bombardment and the subsequent ground operation that began on September 30.
A World Bank report this month said that “the disruption of the olive harvest caused by bombing and displacement is expected to lead to $58 million in losses” in Lebanon.
It said 12 percent of olive groves in the conflict-affected areas it assessed had been destroyed.
Normally, the olive-picking season is highly anticipated in Lebanon, and some people return each year to their native villages and fields just for the harvest.
“Not everyone has the courage to come” this time, said Salim Kassab, who owns a traditional press where villagers bring their olives to extract the oil.
“Many people are absent... They sent workers to replace them,” said Kassab, 50.
“There is fear of the war of course,” he said, adding that he had come alone this year, without his wife and children.
Kassab said that before the conflict, he used to travel to the southern cities of Nabatiyeh and Sidon if he needed to fix his machines, but such trips are near impossible now because of the danger.
The World Bank report estimated that 12 months of agriculture sector losses have cost Lebanon $1.1 billion, in a country already going through a gruelling five-year economic crisis before the fighting erupted.
Areas near the southern border have sustained “the most significant damage and losses,” the report said.
It cited “the burning and abandonment of large areas of agricultural land” in both south and east Lebanon, “along with lost harvests due to the displacement of farmers.”
Elsewhere in Kfeir, Inaam Abu Rizk, 77, and her husband were busy washing olives they plan to either press for oil or jar to be served throughout the winter.
Abu Rizk has taken part in the olive harvest for decades, part of a tradition handed down the generations, and said that despite the war, this year was no different.
“Of course we’re afraid... there is the sound of planes and bombing,” she said.
But “we love the olive month — we are farmers and the land is our work.”
Iraqis face tough homecoming a decade after Daesh rampage
- Baghdad has been pushing for the closure of the displacement camps, with the country having attained a degree of comparative stability in recent years
HASSAN SHAMI: A decade after Daesh group extremists rampaged through northern Iraq, Moaz Fadhil and his eight children finally returned to their village after languishing for years in a displacement camp.
Their home, Hassan Shami, is just a stone’s throw from the tent city where they had been living, and it still bears the scars of the fight against Daesh.
The jihadists seized a third of Iraq, ruling their self-declared “caliphate” with an iron fist, before an international coalition wrestled control from them in 2017.
Seven years on, many of the village’s homes are still in ruins and lacking essential services, but Fadhil said he felt an “indescribable joy” upon moving back in August.
Iraq — marred by decades of war and turmoil even before the rise of Daesh — is home to more than a million internally displaced people.
Baghdad has been pushing for the closure of the displacement camps, with the country having attained a degree of comparative stability in recent years.
Most of the camps in federal Iraq have now been closed, but around 20 remain in the northern autonomous Kurdistan region, which according to the United Nations house more than 115,000 displaced people.
But for many, actually returning home can be a difficult task.
After getting the green light from Kurdish security forces to leave the camp, Fadhil moved his family into a friend’s damaged house because his own is a complete ruin.
“Water arrives by tanker trucks and there is no electricity,” said the 53-year-old.
Although the rubble has been cleared from the structure he now lives in, the cinder block walls and rough concrete floors remain bare.
Across Hassan Shami, half-collapsed houses sit next to concrete buildings under construction by those residents who can afford to rebuild.
Some have installed solar panels to power their new lives.
A small new mosque stands, starkly white, beside an asphalt road.
“I was born here, and before me my father and mother,” said Fadhil, an unemployed farmer.
“I have beautiful memories with my children, my parents.”
The family survives mainly on the modest income brought in by his eldest son, who works as a day laborer on building sites.
“Every four or five days he works a day” for about $8, said Fadhil.
In an effort to close the camps and facilitate returns, Iraqi authorities are offering families around $3,000 to go back to their places of origin.
To do so, displaced people must also get security clearance — to ensure they are not wanted for jihadist crimes — and have their identity papers or property rights in order.
But of the 11,000 displaced people still living in six displacement camps near Hassan Shami, 600 are former prisoners, according to the UN.
They were released after serving up to five years for crimes related to membership of IS.
For them, going home can mean further complications.
There’s the risk of ostracism by neighbors or tribes for their perceived affiliation with Daesh atrocities, potential arrest at a checkpoint by federal forces or even a second trial.
Among them is 32-year-old Rashid, who asked that we use a pseudonym because of his previous imprisonment in Kurdistan for belonging to the jihadist group.
He said he hopes the camp next to Hassan Shami does not close.
“I have a certificate of release (from prison), everything is in order... But I can’t go back there,” he said of federal Iraq.
“If I go back it’s 20 years” in jail, he added, worried that he would be tried again in an Iraqi court.
Ali Abbas, spokesperson for Iraq’s migration ministry, said that those who committed crimes may indeed face trial after they leave the camps.
“No one can prevent justice from doing its job,” he said, claiming that their families would not face repercussions.
The government is working to ensure that families who return have access to basic services, Abbas added.
In recent months, Baghdad has repeatedly tried to set deadlines for Kurdistan to close the camps, even suing leaders of the autonomous region before finally opting for cooperation over coercion.
Imrul Islam of the Norwegian Refugee Council said displacement camps by definition are supposed to be temporary, but warned against their hasty closure.
When people return, “you need schools. You need hospitals. You need roads. And you need working markets that provide opportunities for livelihoods,” he said.
Without these, he said, many families who try to resettle in their home towns would end up returning to the camps.
Even with Lebanon truce deal, Israel will operate against Hezbollah: Netanyahu
- Netanyahu also said there was no evidence that Hezbollah would respect any ceasefire reached
JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel will continue to operate militarily against the Iran-backed Lebanese armed movement Hezbollah even if a ceasefire deal is reached in Lebanon.
“The most important thing is not (the deal that) will be laid on paper,” Netanyahu told the Israeli parliament.
“We will be forced to ensure our security in the north (of Israel) and to systematically carry out operations against Hezbollah’s attacks... even after a ceasefire,” to keep the group from rebuilding, he said.
Netanyahu also said there was no evidence that Hezbollah would respect any ceasefire reached.
“We will not allow Hezbollah to return to the state it was in on October 6” 2023, the eve of the strike by its Palestinian ally Hamas into southern Israel, he said.
Hezbollah then began firing into northern Israel in support of Hamas, triggering exchanges with Israel that escalated into full-on war in late September this year.
Lebanon’s government has largely endorsed a US truce proposal to end the Israel-Hezbollah war and was preparing final comments before responding to Washington, a Lebanese official told AFP on Monday.
Israel insists that any truce deal must guarantee no further Hezbollah presence in the area bordering Israel.
Members of UN Security Council call for surge in assistance to Gaza
- “The situation is devastating, and frankly, beyond comprehension, and it’s getting worse, not better,” Lammy said
NEW YORK: Members of the United Nations Security Council called on Monday for a surge in assistance to reach people in need in Israeli-basieged Gaza, warning that the situation in the Palestinian enclave was getting worse.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said there needs to be a “huge, huge rise in aid” to Gaza, where most of the population of 2.3 million people has been displaced and health officials in the coastal enclave say that more than 43,922 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s 13-month-old offensive against Hamas.
“The situation is devastating, and frankly, beyond comprehension, and it’s getting worse, not better,” Lammy said. “Winter’s here. Famine is imminent, and 400 days into this war, it is totally unacceptable that it’s harder than ever to get aid into Gaza.”
The war erupted after Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel in October last year, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the Security Council that Washington was closely watching Israel’s actions to improve the situation for Palestinians and engaging with the Israeli government every day.
“Israel must also urgently take additional steps to alleviate the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza,” she said.
President Joe Biden’s administration concluded this month that Israel was not currently impeding assistance to Gaza and therefore not violating US law, even as Washington acknowledged the humanitarian situation remained dire in the Palestinian enclave.
The assessment came after the US in an Oct. 13 letter gave Israel a list of steps to take within 30 days to address the deteriorating situation in Gaza, warning that failure to do so might have possible consequences on US military aid to Israel.
Thomas-Greenfield said Israel was working to implement 12 of the 15 steps.
“We need to see all steps fully implemented and sustained, and we need to see concrete improvement in the humanitarian situation on the ground,” she said, including Israel allowing commercial trucks to move into Gaza alongside humanitarian assistance, addressing persistent lawlessness and implementing pauses in fighting in large areas of Gaza to allow assistance to reach those in need.
Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the US, said Israel had facilitated the entrance of hundreds of aid trucks a week but there had been a failure of aid agencies to collect that aid and Hamas had looted trucks. Hamas has denied the accusation.
“Not only must the UN step up its aid distribution obligations, but the focus must also shift to Hamas’ constant hijacking of humanitarian aid to feed the machine of terror and misery,” Danon said.
Two UN aid agencies told Reuters on Monday that nearly 100 trucks carrying food for Palestinians were violently looted on Nov. 16 after entering Gaza in one of the worst losses of aid during the war.
Tor Wennesland, the UN coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said humanitarian agencies face a challenging and dangerous operational environment in Gaza and access restrictions that hinder their work.
“The humanitarian situation in Gaza, as winter begins, is catastrophic, particularly developments in the north of Gaza with a large-scale and near-total displacement of the population and widespread destruction and clearing of land, amidst what looks like a disturbing disregard for international humanitarian law,” Wennesland said.
“The current conditions are among the worst we’ve seen during the entire war and are not set to improve.”
US envoy has first meeting in Sudan with army chief
- Experts say both sides have stonewalled peace efforts as they vie to gain a decisive military advantage, which neither has managed to hold for long
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: A US special envoy on Monday made his first visit to Sudan for talks with the country’s army chief and de facto leader to discuss aid and how to stop the war.
Tom Perriello met Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan in the Red Sea city for what Burhan’s ruling Sovereignty Council called “long, comprehensive and frank” talks.
It said Burhan and Perriello discussed “the roadmap for how to stop the war and deliver humanitarian aid.”
The envoy’s visit came as Russia on Monday vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate end to hostilities in Sudan.
Sudan’s war erupted in April 2023 between the regular army led by Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
It has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people and the displacement of 11 million, according to the United Nations.
The conflict has also resulted in what has been described as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises in recent history.
A US State Department release said Perriello “engaged in frank dialogue with Sudanese officials.”
It said these centered “on the need to cease fighting, enable unhindered humanitarian access, including through localized pauses in the fighting to allow for the delivery of emergency relief supplies, and commit to a civilian government.”
Monday’s visit was the special envoy’s first to Port Sudan, the Red Sea city where government offices and the UN have relocated since fleeing the war-torn capital Khartoum.
It is also the first diplomatic overture in months, since Sudan’s military opted out of US-brokered negotiations in Switzerland.
Experts say both sides have stonewalled peace efforts as they vie to gain a decisive military advantage, which neither has managed to hold for long.
Perriello’s trip comes after repeated failed efforts at mediation.
The statement from Burhan’s office said Perriello expressed the “shared ambition for an end to the war to put a stop to the atrocities and violations we have witnessed recently.”
Writing on social media platform X, the US envoy welcomed “recent progress to expand humanitarian access.”
“As the largest aid donor to Sudan, we will work around the clock to ensure that food, water and medicine can reach people in all 18 states plus refugees,” Perriello posted.
Peace efforts, including by the United States, Saudi Arabia and the African Union, have only succeeded in marginally increasing access to humanitarian aid, which both the military and the RSF are accused of blocking.
International pressure has managed to secure government authorization for aid to be delivered through Adre, a key border crossing with Chad and the only access point to famine-stricken Darfur in western Sudan.
However, on Monday Burhan told Perriello his government rejects “the exploitation of the Adre crossing to deliver weapons to the rebels,” a reference to the RSF’s reported use of the border as a weapons supply route.
Monday’s Russian veto at the UN came with the Security Council largely paralyzed in its ability to deal with conflicts because of splits between permanent members, notably Russia and the United States.
