Israel’s top general said Lebanese terror group Hezbollah planned to use its array of underground attack tunnels to carry out a surprise invasion of Israel that would “throw Israel off balance and cause an earthquake in Israeli society.”
Gadi Eisenkot’s comments came a month after the IDF launched an ongoing operation to locate and destroy the cross-border attack tunnels dug from Lebanon.
In an interview aired just days before he is set to leave his post on January 15, Eisenkot told Hadashot TV news that Hezbollah “had grandiose notions. They were looking many years ahead, to a war or wide escalation, where they [believed they] would have a surprise, an ace in their deck.”
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, he said, “now knows that Israel has known for years about his most secret plan: to carry out a secret, surprise attack on Israel in the future” via the tunnels.
Eisenkot once quipped that if Nasrallah “knew what we know about him, he’d be the most worried man in the Middle East.” On Thursday he said this was even more accurate: “I know much more today.”
Excerpts of Eisenkot’s comments aired on Thursday ahead of the full broadcast on Friday evening.
Hezbollah, the outgoing army chief said, “had built what they thought was a fantastic plan, with several tunnels [entering Israel under the border] from the Metulla area to the sea, and their intention was to launch an attack that would begin with a surprise attack from underground — sending 1,000 to 1,500 fighters into our side.”
To cover the invasion, “they planned a massive artillery bombardment of IDF bases. [They aimed to] gain control of a piece of Israeli territory and hold it for weeks,” he said.
Hezbollah’s goal, he said, was to demonstrate Israeli frailty.
“They said, this is something Israel has never experienced since its founding, and it will be an achievement that will disrupt the State of Israel’s ability to attack inside Lebanon, throw Israel off balance, and cause an earthquake in Israeli society,” he said.
In excerpts from a second interview, with the Kan public broadcaster, Eisenkot said that Israel was “not currently striking in Lebanon openly, but [is] working through many clandestine channels that contribute to Israel’s security without causing an escalation.”
Channel 10 News reported that Eisenkot went down into one of the tunnels on Friday. When he emerged, he told an interviewer, “I didn’t realize how big it was… We’ve not seen anything like this in the past.”
The Hezbollah tunnel “project is over,” he said, “but not their goal to capture parts of the Galilee.”
On the subject of the Gaza Strip, and criticism he and government officials — including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — have faced for the handling of Hamas and the terror threat posed by the restive Palestinian enclave, Eisenkot told Kan: “The Gaza problem is not only a military problem, it is a much more complex problem that demands a multi-pronged approach.
“This operation is almost entirely behind us,” Netanyahu said in a statement released by his office on December 25. “There is exceptional work being carried out here that has disarmed the Hezbollah tunnels,” he said. “It [Hezbollah] invested heavily in it and we destroyed it.”
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