A warning to Hezbollah: Israel’s largest drill on the Lebanese border since October 7
The Israeli army is launching this Sunday its largest joint military exercise on the Lebanese border since October 7. According to the Israeli daily Maariv, while Hezbollah continues to rehabilitate itself on multiple fronts, the question is no longer if it will surprise Israel, but when.
The paper reports that the exercise is a joint drill by the 91st Division along the Lebanese frontier, during which the Israeli military will test its defensive and offensive capabilities with a focus on defensive combat and containment operations. The maneuvers come at an extremely sensitive time on the northern border. “True, Hezbollah was defeated and took a painful hit, but it is still alive,” Maariv writes. The group is reportedly working to rebuild in several areas: strengthening its military power, restoring defensive and offensive capacities, and retrieving rockets and weapons from damaged ammunition depots — some of which are classified as secondary ordnance.
Maariv adds that Hezbollah is also seeking to recover its standing in Lebanon’s internal arena, to maintain its role as a state-within-a-state, and to restore operational capabilities with the aim of surprising Israel and, among other goals, avenging the heavy blow Israel inflicted on Iran. The group is also operating overseas: arrests of suspects have recently been reported in Germany, East Asia and elsewhere, while Hezbollah is believed to be building infrastructure in southern Syria and smuggling weapons into the West Bank.
The paper notes that in recent days the Israeli Air Force has carried out several strikes in the Wadi (valley) of Lebanon and southern Lebanon, specifically in areas of contact villages. The latest strike, reported Saturday evening, neutralized a Hezbollah operative who was reportedly trying to rebuild the group’s militant infrastructure in south Lebanon. The army also said that, as part of an operation conducted by the Mountain Brigade (810) in cooperation with Unit 504 of Military Intelligence, several suspects were arrested Saturday night while attempting to smuggle weapons from Syria into Lebanon in the Mount Hermon area.
The 91st Division’s exercise will simulate wartime conditions. But, Maariv warns, the bigger problem is that “the Israeli army has not trained for tomorrow’s war: until October 7, 2023, the army was preparing for an underground attack by Hamas, and it was hit by a comprehensive surface assault.” The article concludes that the army
must now train itself to think like Hamas and Iran in order to better absorb and anticipate their modes of operation.
