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The Iran-backed Lebanese terror group, Hezbollah, organised a large-scale military exercise in southern Lebanon on Sunday to simulate a war with Israel.
The terror group invited the media to witness masked fighters jumping through flaming hoops, firing live bullets from the back of motorcycles, and blowing up Israeli flags on a simulation of the Israel-Lebanon border. Hezbollah also reportedly practiced scenarios involving the kidnapping of one or more Israeli soldiers.
Rocket launchers were displayed during the drills; the terror group is believed to have amassed an arsenal of up to 150,000 rockets in southern Lebanon – over ten times more than it had in the 2006 war with Israel. The rockets include hundreds of long-range Iranian-made missiles capable of striking Israeli cities from north to south, as well as systems with improved accuracy.
A senior Hezbollah official, Hashem Safieddine, said that the exercise aimed to “confirm our complete readiness to confront any aggression”.
The simulation coincided with the anniversary of “Liberation Day”, the annual celebration of the withdrawal of Israeli forces from South Lebanon in May 2000.
Hezbollah and other Palestinian terror groups in Lebanon have fired rockets towards Israel in recent years and tried to infiltrate its borders but there has been no major escalation of violence with Lebanon since 2006.
Tensions have increased in recent months, with 34 rockets fired from Lebanon towards Israel during Passover – the largest number of rockets fired from Lebanon since the 2006 war. In March, a terrorist entered Israel from Lebanon and detonated an advanced explosive device seriously injuring an Arab Israeli citizen. The terrorist was later found with an explosive suicide vest in northern Israel, and security analysts believe he likely worked in coordination with Hezbollah and Palestinian terror groups.
At a conference hosted by the Institute for Policy and Strategy of Reichman University in Herzliya on Monday, the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) Military Intelligence Directorate chief, Aharon Haliva, said that “the chances of an escalation that could deteriorate into war is not low”, and Hezbollah was “close to making a mistake that could plunge the region into a big war”. He added that Israel is facing “a real threat” from Iran, stating that “the confrontation has become direct” between the two countries in recent years.
