An Israeli expert recently revealed that the Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and the militant group Hezbollah have built "explosive tunnels" in the south of Lebanon as part of a wider network that is more sophisticated than the tunnels built by Hamas in Gaza.
According to Tal Beeri, the director of the research department at the Alma Research and Education Center, he has spent years studying Lebanon's tunnels and was able to track down a "map of polygons" covering what he called the "Land of the Tunnels" in the country on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. "The map is marked, by an unknown party, with polygons [circles] indicating 36 geographic regions, towns and villages," he wrote in the 2021 paper. "In our assessment, these polygons mark Hezbollah's staging centers as part of the defense plan against an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Each local staging center (defense) possesses a network of local underground tunnels. Between all these centers, an infrastructure of regional tunnels was built, interconnected [with] them."
Beeri told the Times of Israel this week that he has drawn up a map showing a 45-kilometer route of one "attack tunnel" in south Lebanon. "We see the work that Hamas has been doing. And if that's what's been going on with the digging and building of the tunnels in Gaza, well, in Lebanon, it is more sophisticated," he said.
He further disclosed the kinds of tunnels in Lebanon, including the attack tunnels, which are particularly large and long tunnels that lead from area to area. These can be entered by vehicles and even medium-sized trucks. There are also tactical tunnels, which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) exposed and destroyed in Operation Northern Shield in January 2019. The tactical tunnels are close to villages and enable terrorists to fight from underground; to fire from tunnel shafts and duck back in; to rearm from weapons stores inside; and to rest and emerge again.
"In our assessment, it could be that there are also 'proximate tunnels.' These are similar to the attack tunnels that the IDF thwarted in 2019 but don't cross the border. They enable access almost to the border, and from there to emerge and attack. We're talking about activities such as those by the Radwan force that has been planning to invade Galilee. An additional kind of tunnel are explosive tunnel. They are dug for the sole purpose of placing explosives inside, with the devices to be detonated when the IDF maneuvers on the ground inside Lebanon," Beeri said.
The Lebanon tunnel project was reportedly developed long before the one in Gaza. Two weeks ago, an IDF spokesman revealed one of the biggest attack tunnels in the Gaza Strip was four kilometers long and wide enough for vehicles to drive through. It ran from Jabaliya, north of Gaza City, up until some 400 meters from the Erez border crossing into Israel.
While the tunnel did not cross the border, it presumably could have enabled terrorists on motorcycles and other vehicles to drive underground from the Jabaliya area and exit close to the border before IDF surveillance soldiers or patrols could block them. The IDF did not specify whether this was the case when 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists poured into Israel on October 7.
Hezbollah ready to retaliate following Saleh al-Arouri's assassination
According to local Israeli news outlets, Hezbollah's tunnels in Lebanon could play a vital role in its ambitions to invade northern Israel. In December, an Alma Center report warned that Hezbollah is fully prepared to invade with its elite Radwan unit. "The Radwan unit is fully trained and capable of launching an incursion into the Galilee at any given moment," stated the Alma report. "Even if the majority of Hezbollah's elite forces have distanced themselves from the border, there is no change to Hezbollah's overall readiness." (Related: Hezbollah strikes Northern Israel with four rockets, destroying key IDF base.)
Meanwhile, tensions soared along the Israel-Lebanon border after senior Hamas chief Saleh al-Arouri was assassinated on Tuesday in a drone attack attributed to the IDF in Beirut. Hamas has already warned that it will retaliate and its ally Hezbollah has likewise threatened to respond to the alleged Israeli airstrike that took place, stressing in an official statement that the elimination of the Hamas commander in Lebanon would not go unpunished.
"We consider the assassination of Arouri and his companions in Beirut a serious act of aggression against Lebanon and the Lebanese people, including the security of Lebanon, its sovereignty and the resistance movement. We declare that this crime will not go unpunished and that the hands of the resistance are on the trigger and its forces are on high alert," Hezbollah stated.
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Watch the video below that talks about the assassination of al-Arouri in Lebanon.
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