Israel Matzav

Hezbullah tunneling into northern Israel?

The IDF is concerned with the possibility that Hezbullah could tunnel under the border between Israel and Lebanon and attempt to take civilian hostages or attack IDF outposts.

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.

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.

This is not an idle concern. Please consider this article from October 2007:

Last summer Yitzhak Goren went out to his orchards to check the damage after a barrage of more than 100 Hizbullah Katyusha rockets slammed across Israel's Galilee. No one was working the orchards those days. The plums rotting under the trees gave off a sweet fermented smell. Branches were strewn everywhere. Yitzhak noted the craters left by the rockets, but one seemed different. He didn't see the bottom of the crater and or the shrapnel left by the rocket. In fact, he couldn't see the bottom of the crater at all. Just darkness.

Goren had stumbled on one of the surprises promised by Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah. It was the exit of a mile-long tunnel dug from Lebanon. The tunnel's mouth was in a stone quarry purchased by Hizbullah five years ago. The dust and trucks around the quarry raised no suspicion. Nor did the North Korean advisors and equipment brought in by the Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation (a.k.a. Changgwang Sinyong Corporation) to assist the Iranians and Lebanese Shi'ites digging the 100-foot deep tunnel shaft.

The North Korean-Iranian cooperation in Lebanon is an extension of North Korea and Iran's conflict with the United States and its allies, a cooperation that also includes the provision of long- range missiles and nuclear research to Syria.

Indeed, despite its "mining" appellation, the Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation was sanctioned by the United States for missile development and proliferation activities. As for the tunnels, North Korea had 50 years of experience digging tunnels under the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea, some 500 feet deep and two miles long. Equipped with electric lines and ventilation, some of the DMZ tunnels were large enough for the passage of a thousand soldiers an hour. Hizbullah's plans were more modest: to send 200 guerrillas behind Israel's lines to shoot up civilian targets and military vehicles waiting to move into Lebanon. Hundreds of advanced shoulder-fired RPG-29s and laser- guided Kornet-E anti-tank missiles were already in place in their subterranean storerooms 100 yards from the end of the tunnel when the errant Katyusha punched a hole in the tunnel exit.

The above description of Yitzhak Goren's tunnel is fiction. The description of North Korean tunnels and cooperation with Iran are based on fact.

Hmmm.

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:27 PM