The Israeli operation to locate the tunnels along the border with Lebanon is now entering its second stage. After the surprising announcement about the discovery of the tunnels and the media campaign against Hezbollah, the IDF is now moving on to systematically surveying the border region. So far, the discovery of two tunnels in Israeli territory has been reported, and the location of a third tunnel on the Lebanese side of the border has been provided to UN forces.

In the Lebanese political arena, the continued silence of Hezbollah has stood out – alongside the embarrassment that the affair has brought on among the rest of the country’s power centers.

The IDF’s initial assessment that it would take a month to complete the operation could well turn out to be too optimistic. The identification of the tunnels is proceeding at the planned pace, but it is possible that the destruction of their routes will take longer than originally estimated. The IDF’s assessment was that Hezbollah would avoid a direct military response, as long as the tunnels were located and destroyed inside Israeli territory and as long as the group sustained no casualties as a result of Israeli operations.

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