Resistance Ramps Up ‘Unity of Arenas Strategy’

Date: 23 June 2024 - 21:54

News ID: ۱۲۸۶۸۴

BEIRUT (Dispatches) -- The Lebanese Hezbollah resistance group launched several explosive-laden drones at Israeli targets in the north on Sunday, seriously wounding a soldier in one incident.

In the first incident on Sunday morning, an explosive-laden drone launched from Lebanon struck an area near the northern kibbutz of Beit Hillel, the military and local authorities said.

The Zionist military said an interceptor missile was launched at the UAV, but it failed to intercept the device.

Hezbollah took responsibility for the drone attack, claiming to have targeted an Israeli military base adjacent to the kibbutz.

Several hours later, another drone was apparently launched by Hezbollah over the Lower Galilee, near a sensitive defense facility.

The military said the device had entered occupied Palestinian airspace from Lebanon, but drone infiltration sirens did not sound “according to protocol.”

The northern city of Sakhnin, an area that houses a major factory belonging to the Rafael military contractor, was apparently the target.

Rocket sirens sounded in several towns near Sakhnin, some 25 kilometers from the Lebanon border.

In a statement, Hezbollah said it launched several explosive-laden drones at a military base near the northern kibbutz of Ayelet HaShahar, about 10 kilometers from the Lebanese border.

According to the Zionist military, one of the drones was shot down, while several more struck near Ayelet HaShahar, sparking fires and seriously wounding one soldier.

Footage circulating on social media showed one of the Hezbollah drones impacting near a military base.

The Hezbollah drone attacks sparked fires near Dishon, the Misgav Forest, and Ayelet HaShahar, the Zionist regime’s fire and rescue services said.

The operations came after fighter jets struck a building in southern Lebanon’s Kafr Kila on Saturday night. A separate strike targeted Taybeh, the military added.

Tensions between Hezbollah and the occupying regime of Israel have recently reached a fever pitch, after an Israeli airstrike targeted Taleb Abdullah, the resistance group’s commander for the central region of the southern border strip and its most senior commander assassinated in the current war.

Since October 8, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli kibbutz and military posts along the Lebanese border on a near-daily basis, with the resistance group saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there.

On Saturday, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed to have launched drones at a “vital target” in Israel’s southernmost city of Eilat. It said the attack was in support of Palestinians in Gaza.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed dozens of drone attacks on Israel amid the war on Gaza. In one case, it managed to hit an Israeli Navy base in Eilat, causing damage.

Along with the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, resistance groups in Yemen and Syria have claimed to have launched dozens of drones at Israel during the ongoing war. Iran also carried out an unprecedented attack on Israel in April with hundreds of drones and missiles.

Thousands of Resistance Fighters

Offer to Join Hezbollah

Thousands of fighters from resistance groups in West Asia are ready to come to Lebanon to join with Hezbollah in its battle with Israel if the simmering conflict escalates into a full-blown war, officials with resistance factions and analysts say.

Zionist officials have threatened a military invasion of Lebanon if there is no negotiated end to push Hezbollah away from the border.

Over the past decade, fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan fought together in Syria’s 13-year conflict, helping tip the balance in favor of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Officials from resistance groups say they could also join together again against Israel.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech Wednesday that resistance leaders from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and other countries have previously offered to send tens of thousands of fighters to help Hezbollah, but he said the group already has more than 100,000 fighters.

“We told them, thank you, but we are overwhelmed by the numbers we have,” Nasrallah said.

Nasrallah said the battle in its current form is using only a portion of Hezbollah’s manpower, an apparent reference to the specialized fighters who fire missiles and drones.

But that could change in the event of an all-out war. Nasrallah hinted at that possibility in a speech in 2017 in which he said fighters from Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan “will be partners” of such a war.

Officials from Lebanese and Iraqi groups say fighters from around the region will join in if war erupts on the Lebanon border. Thousands of such fighters are already deployed in Syria and could easily slip through the porous and unmarked border.

Some of the groups have already staged attacks on Israel and its allies since the war started Oct. 7. The groups from the “axis of resistance” say they are using a “unity of arenas strategy” and they will only stop fighting when Israel ends its invasion of Gaza.

“We will be (fighting) shoulder to shoulder with Hezbollah” if an all-out war breaks out, one official with a resistance group in Iraq told The Associated Press in Baghdad, insisting on speaking anonymously to discuss military matters. He refused to give further details.

The official, along with another from Iraq, said some advisers from Iraq are already in Lebanon.

An official with a Lebanese group, also insisting on anonymity, said fighters from Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, Afghanistan’s Fatimiyoun, Pakistan Zeinabiyoun and Yemen’s Ansarullah could come to Lebanon to take part in a war.

Qassim Qassir, an expert on Hezbollah, agreed the current fighting is mostly based on high technology such as firing missiles and does not need a large number of fighters. But if a war broke out and lasted for a long period, Hezbollah might need support from outside Lebanon, he said.

“Hinting to this matter could be (a message) that these are cards that could be used,” he said.

Israel is also aware of the possible influx of foreign fighters.

Eran Etzion, former head of policy planning for the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs, said at a panel discussion hosted by the Washington-based Middle East Institute on Thursday that he sees “a high probability” of a “multi-front war.”

He said there could be intervention by the Yemeni and Iraqi militias and a “massive flow of fighters from (places) including Afghanistan, Pakistan” into Lebanon and into Syrian areas bordering Palestine.

Daniel Hagari, Israel’s military spokesman, said in a televised statement this past week that since Hezbollah started its attacks on Israel on Oct. 8, it has fired more than 5,000 rockets, anti-tank missiles and drones toward the occupying regime.

Hezbollah officials have said they don’t want an all-out war with Israel but if it happens they are ready.

“We have taken a decision that any expansion, no matter how limited it is, will be faced with an expansion that deters such a move and inflicts heavy Israeli losses,” Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Naim Kassem, said in a speech this past week.

Qassir, the analyst, said that if foreign fighters did join in, it would help them that they fought together in Syria in the past.

“There is a common military language between the forces of axis of resistance and this is very important in fighting a joint battle,” he said.

U.S.: Hezbollah Missiles Would Overwhelm Iron Dome

Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile batteries risk being overwhelmed in the opening strikes of any significantly escalated conflict with Hezbollah.

The assessment delivered by U.S. officials late last week, echoing recent analysis by experts in Israel and the United States, comes amid fears that a war with Hezbollah could be a far more dangerous undertaking than the devastating 2006 second Lebanon war, when Israeli bombing caused huge destruction in Lebanon.

On Friday, Kuwait’s foreign ministry warned its citizens to avoid travelling to Lebanon and urged those already in the country to leave. There are also reports that officials in the Biden administration told an Israeli delegation in Washington that America would offer security assistance in the event of a wider conflict, while António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, called for “reason and rationality” to avoid potentially catastrophic consequences for the region and the world.

Since 2006, Hezbollah has significantly expanded its arsenal and capabilities, including acquiring suicide drones which Israel has struggled to counter, an anti-aircraft missile capability and a widely expanded array of missiles which experts now believe number between 120,000 and 200,000.

It is the scale of Hezbollah’s missile arsenal, and an operational doctrine for their use in a major conflict with Israel, that is likely to be most challenging.

Since 2006, Hezbollah has acquired hundreds of guided ballistic missiles, with the ability to fire them from hardened bunkers and from mobile launchers.

Complicating Israel’s miseries has been Hezbollah’s increasing and effective use of drones, including kamikaze weapons, which Israel’s existing air defenses have failed to counter.

A three-year research project by Reichman University’s Institute in Israel, completed not long before the Hamas operation on October 7, concluded Hezbollah could fire up to 3,000 missiles a day, a rate that could be sustained for up to three weeks. Its key aim would be to force the collapse of Israel’s air defenses.

“The expectation of the public and of a significant portion of the leadership, that the Israeli Air Force and effective Israeli intelligence systems will succeed in preventing most of the rocket attacks on Israel, will be shattered,” the report said. “This is also the case regarding the public’s belief that the threat of Israeli retaliation or a substantial Israeli attack on significant Lebanese assets will force Hezbollah to cease fire or significantly impair their ability to continue attacking Israeli territory.”

According to a recent briefing paper assessing Hezbollah’s rocket capability prepared by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a U.S. think tank, “finding and destroying Hezbollah’s rocket and missile capabilities would involve an enormous reconnaissance-strike effort”.

“Hezbollah’s rocket and missile arsenal also includes long-range missiles,” the paper adds. “These are also likely to be used mainly in a coercive capacity, with Hezbollah undertaking long-range strikes to undermine Israeli support for the war.”

The most serious challenge, experts believe, is likely to be the sheer number of incoming missiles fired in waves deliberately designed to overwhelm Israel’s air defense systems.

“It would be a tall order for Israeli air defenses to confront the widespread rocket arsenal coming from the north,” Seth G Jones, an analyst at the think tank in Washington, said last week, echoing warnings from Pentagon officials. “We assess that at least some” Iron Dome batteries “will be overwhelmed”, a senior Biden administration official told CNN, which also reported that Israel was moving extra air defense assets to the north.

Israel has about 10 Iron Dome batteries each with about four individual launchers, each battery connected to a radar system that detects incoming missiles. Like all systems, however, it is physically limited by how many threats it can engage simultaneously.

Hezbollah’s upgraded missile capability has triggered plans for coping with mass casualties if war breaks out. Not everyone is convinced that Israel’s military and political leadership has fully grasped the risks.

Speaking at a conference last week Shaul Goldstein, head of Noga, which manages Israel’s electrical systems, warned: “We are not ready for a real war. We live in a fantasy world, in my eyes.” He added that Israel would be “uninhabitable” after 72 hours without power. “You look at all of our infrastructure, the optical fibers, the ports – and I won’t go into the sensitive things – we are not in a good place.”