The Search : IDF+Hezbollah+UNIFIL

IDF operations to locate Hezbollah tunnels near Kafr Kela (Photo: AFP)

"We closed the base, canceling all vacations on Friday. We went from zero to 100: full operational readiness ahead of an operation."
"The soldiers had no idea what was about to happen. First the commanders were briefed, and orders were issues to the forces later. I, as the commander of the unit, and central people in the Engineering Corps, had our standing operating procedure [SOP] for many months beforehand. I had a small, compartmentalized team in my unit that dealt with the technological and operational aspects of the tunnels on the northern front. Some of the time they were stationed at the Northern Command and worked with the special team formed there, an intelligence-operational team, which was investigating the tunnels over the past four years. We prepared the combat soldiers 72 hours before the operation."
"[The soldiers did not require special training for the operation because] they train in the underground model all year long, both the southern model and the northern one, and study the ground—which is completely different in each of these fronts—in great detail. They don't know what they're training for."
"Starting on Friday [before the launch of the operation], the soldiers once again studied the ground, we prepared the equipment, and we prepared the teams who will be deployed to several areas on the northern border. Each team like that is made up of fighters and experts, with the latter responsible for the technological aspect of locating the tunnels. This operation is the biggest engineering effort the unit has carried out that was not part of a war."
"We're preparing for a long stay on the northern border. We'll work in an organized, systematic manner, one area after another, to rule out any possibility of underground infiltration. As a veteran commander in the army, I'm excited every time anew when I see the soldiers: the creativity, the initiative, the solutions they come up with... the war against the tunnels is a war of minds: the enemy is trying to hide, conceal, mislead—and doing so very skillfully. I don't dismiss the northern enemy or the southern one. But we're here until the threat is lifted."

Col. Shahar Beck, commander, Yahalom, Special Operations Engineering Unit 

Hezbollah fighters in the tunnel (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Office)

If you live in southern Israel, and if you live in northern Israel, abutting the border of Gaza and Lebanon respectively, there are strange phenomena that occur, identifiable for what they represent yet so stretching credulity that they appear as though they must be paranoiac, a figment of an over-stressed imagination. People living close to those borders for years were at first puzzled, and then terrified, hearing the unmistakable underground sounds of digging emanating from beneath their homes. Reports to the military failed to clear up the mystery.

But the military took note and its leaders fully understood what was occurring. Unable to cross the border stealthily because of on-duty guards, the surrounding separating wall notwithstanding, Hamas to the south in Gaza and Hezbollah to the north in Lebanon simply began extending their options underground. Both have long been stockpiling arms and lethal weaponry of an increasingly sophisticated military nature; Hezbollah in spite of the presence of UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) there to prevent any such occurrence.

Hezbollah's ATV-mounted missile launchers

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine, UNRWA, on the other hand, the UN's unique dedicated refugee program for Palestinians, for its part, employs Palestinians locally, and has been known to lend itself to protecting and supporting terrorist activities whereby educational curricula at Palestinian schools in the West Bank and Gaza incite children to hatred and violence and a future as 'martyrs'. It is a stretch of credulity to claim that any United Nations agency acts in complete neutrality; arms of the UN emulate what is prevalent throughout the UN.

These 'protective', proactive agents of the United Nations act in the interests of their clients and the purported 'even-handedness' in their deployment has been revealed for what it is time and again. This time, IDF Chief of Staff, Lt.Gen. Gadi Eisenkot met with Maj.Gen. Stefano Del Col, head of the UN peace-keeping force in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL). Reasonably enough to bring Del Col up to date on the IDF having discovered the presence of Hezbollah-built secret tunnels into Israel from Lebanon. Del Col advanced the suggestion that one should hesitate to indulge in speculations.

Perhaps the tunnels were built by some other group? For his part, Eisenkot was curious how it was that with a strength of 10,500 UNIFIL soldiers to monitor the activities of Hezbollah, at no time did a single one of those soldiers representing UNIFIL uncover the activities leading to the construction of such tunnels. To date, three such tunnels have been revealed and destroyed, and more are being sought out with a similar intention. UNIFIL's mandate since 2006 was to ensure all militia forces are kept behind four kilometres north of the Lebanon-Israeli border, according to UNSC (UN Security Council) Resolution 1702.

IDF searches for Hezbollah tunnels as part of Operation Northern Shield (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Office)

A stone's throw from the Israeli border there are two Lebanese villages; Kafr Kila and Ramya. In Kafr Kila, an agricultural village of ten thousand souls, a "cement block factory" was built. IDF personnel on the Israeli side of the border couldn't help but notice strange activity around the factory at Kafr Kila, where heavy truck traffic was seen with IDF airborne devices, going to and from the factory; arriving empty, leaving fully loaded with excavated dirt. Clear enough to the IDF that this was the site of a major tunnelling network operation.

Hezbollah has free reign in the area with the backing of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps and the Islamic Republic of Iran, since Hezbollah is a Shiite creature of both Iran and the IRGC, a proxy militia dedicated to the destruction of the State of Israel. Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah hasn't been averse to public boasting that Hezbollah would conquer northern Israel and destroy the country. Iran supports the aspirations of Sunni Hamas as well, with its similar goal, recognizing the potential for a pincer movement, a strategy that would see Israel defending itself on its southern and northern borders simultaneously.

Israel knows just how lethal the Palestinian intentions are toward its existence. In 1974 terrorists of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine took over 114 school children hostage, slaughtering 25 of their number, before rescue, while in 1980 Kibbutz Misgav Am was attacked by terrorist of a splinter group under the Palestine Liberation Organization, taking infants and babies and their caregivers hostage, murdering two of the group -- when the IDF responded a soldier died rescuing them.

Israel is building a massive underground separation fence between it and Gaza, digging deep and wide to prevent the construction of more tunnels entering Israel. Hamas conceived then of Friday post-prayer border protests of Gazans 'protesting' the border and attempting to enter Israel, leading to floating incendiary devices fastened to balloons over the border, torching agricultural fields and nature preserves. The tunnel that the IDF discovered from Kafr Kila reached 600 meters into Israel, close to a northern Israeli town of Metulla with its 2,000 population.

Israel cannot afford to miss signals informing it that inroads are being breached into its security. Nor can it afford to 'lose' even one skirmish; even the very hint of a loss becomes cause for celebration among Palestinians at yet another blow sustained by Israel in the longstanding commitment of the Palestinian leadership to deny 'normalization' with Israel in favour of a peace settlement and an agreement to allow one another to live in peace and security.

IDF searches for Hezbollah tunnels as part of Operation Northern Shield (Photo: AFP)