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Intelligence chief warns next Hezbollah conflict will be unlike others
The Head of IDF Military Intelligence said yesterday that although Israel is the strongest power in the region, the next conflict with Hezbollah will be on a larger scale than previously experienced.
Speaking at the Herzliya Conference, a major policy forum,General Herzl Halevi gave an overview of Israel’s strategic position.
He said: “On the one hand, the (overall) situation is improving… we are stronger than the other actors which surround us.”
However, he added that the Middle East is continually unstable and so “on the other hand, we are in a complicated environment – one might say explosive. The situation has both improved and become more complicated”.
Reflecting on the ten years which have passed since the Second Lebanon War against Hezbollah, Halevi said: “It seems that the two sides are not against another decade of quiet.”
He also warned that he did not think “the next war will be easy”. Halevi explained that “wars have changed, and we need to also note that the war experience on the home front and the front lines has also changed”.
Halevi’s remarks came as Major-General (res) Yitzhak Gershon, who commanded the home front during the Second Lebanon War, warned earlier this week that in a future conflict with Hezbollah, Israel’s northern communities could expect around 1,200 rockets daily, compared to 160 in 2006. It was also reported this week that some communities on Israel’s northern border carried out an evacuation drill.
Halevi said confidently: “If there is another war, Israel will recover and rebuild… We are a strong society, an advanced society.” By contrast, he predicted that Lebanon will become a country of refugees that will have difficultly recovering, and Hezbollah will lose its political support base.
Halevi also warned that the Assad regime in Syria is manufacturing weapons for Hezbollah to use against Israel, including “ammunition of the sort it hadn’t had access to previously.” He contended that the world shouldn’t accept this, especially as it violates United Nations’ Security Council resolutions.