Deadly Hezbollah drone strike reveals Israel’s weaknesses

Jerusalem
CNN
—

Hezbollah’s deadly attack on an army base deep inside Israeli territory is a major headache for Israel as the country continues to struggle to defuse the threat posed by the Iran-backed militant group despite launching an extensive bombing campaign and a ground operation against Hezbollah .

A drone launched from southern Lebanon was able to penetrate Israeli air defenses undetected and hit the Golani Brigade base about 40 miles from the border. The impact occurred shortly after 7 p.m. on Sunday – dinner time – and although the military has not released details of the impact site, photos from the scene clearly show that the drone hit the base’s dining hall.

Both the timing and location of the attack indicate that Hezbollah had gathered enough intelligence and had the capabilities to maximize casualties. The Golani Brigade is considered an elite Israeli infantry unit and was stationed in southern Lebanon as part of the Israeli ground operation.

Four soldiers were killed and more than 60 others were injured, eight of them seriously, bringing the total number of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers killed since the ground operation began two weeks ago to at least 18.

Sunday’s attack is also the bloodiest attack on IDF troops in Israel since the war began last October.

Daniel Sobelman, an international security expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said this shows Hezbollah is still capable of striking.

“It is a clear sign that Hezbollah is regaining its strategic balance after the recent devastating blows to its leadership and its command and control apparatus,” he told CNN, referring to the assassination of Hezbollah’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah , and other top officials.

Israel’s air defense systems are formidable, intercepting and destroying most projectiles fired at the country. But they were designed and developed primarily to defend against missiles and missiles, not drones that can be launched from anywhere, fly low and slowly, and change direction quickly.

And although the IDF has not said what type of aircraft was used in Sunday’s attack, experts told CNN it was most likely a Mirsad drone, a type known in Iran as Ababil drones.

Orna Mizrahi, a senior research fellow at the Israel Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, told CNN that such unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are harder to detect because they are “small, very light and have a very low radar signature.” “

Iran and its allies are trying to overwhelm Israel’s defense systems, Mizrahi said, adding drones after identifying them as Israel’s “weakness.”

“Every time we find a solution to something, they find another way to attack,” she said.

The residents of Israel are well trained to avoid dangers from above. Most people head to emergency shelters, which are ubiquitous across much of the country, or duck into a ditch when they hear the sirens signaling an impending threat from the air.

But the drone sent by Hezbollah over the weekend managed to slip through without triggering Israeli alarm systems. The soldiers in the dining room were attacked without warning.

And it wasn’t the first time this happened.

In June, Hezbollah released a nine-minute video filmed by a drone showing civilian and military sites in and around one of Israel’s largest cities, Haifa. This UAV also appeared to have gone undetected by the IDF.

Responding to the video, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said at the time that the Israeli military was “preparing and developing solutions to deal with these and other capabilities.”

Then in July, a drone fired by Iran-backed Houthi rebels from Yemen killed one man and injured at least 10 others in Tel Aviv. No sirens were activated during this attack. The IDF said two drones were fired and one was intercepted but the other was not – due to alleged human error.

The tactic of sending two drones also appears to have been adopted by Hezbollah last week.

The IDF said two drones were launched from Lebanon on Friday, adding that it intercepted one of them but did not disclose what happened to the other. A nursing home in the coastal city of Herzliya in central Israel was damaged in the attack, but no injuries were reported.

It is very likely that the same strategy was used on Sunday. Shortly before the first reports of the attack on the Golani Brigade base, the IDF said it had intercepted a UAV launched from Lebanon in Israel’s northern naval area. This suggests that the drone that hit the base was a second aircraft that was fired either at the same time or just before or after the first. The IDF did not comment on the number of drones launched on Sunday.

Hezbollah said it fired dozens of rockets at the northern Israeli towns of Nahariya and Acre to attack Israel’s air defense systems, while simultaneously firing the drones.

Hezbollah remains able to fire on Israel, although the IDF launched an intensive airstrike on Lebanon as well as a limited ground operation against the group.

More than 1,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since September 16, when Israel stepped up its campaign against Hezbollah, according to a CNN review of Lebanese Health Ministry statements.

When the IDF launched its ground operation against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, it insisted that any action across the border would be “limited” in both geographical scope and duration and aimed at dismantling Hezbollah’s military infrastructure in the border areas .

About 60,000 people have been evacuated from northern Israel since Hezbollah began firing rocket fire into Israel on October 8 last year in support of Hamas in Gaza, which had launched deadly attacks against Israel a day earlier.

But the reality on the ground suggests that Israel may be preparing for the possibility of a much larger war. It has deployed units from four divisions to southern Lebanon and ordered residents of a quarter of Lebanese territory to evacuate. According to the United Nations, more than 1.2 million people are now displaced.

The IDF does not disclose its troop numbers, but each division is said to consist of around 10,000 to 20,000 soldiers.

Analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said Israel sent around 30,000 troops across the border when it last invaded Lebanon in 2006.

This war ended in a stalemate after 34 days, with about 1,100 Lebanese and about 170 Israelis, including 120 soldiers, killed.

CSIS said a new operation on the ground could require a larger force than the one Israel deployed against Hezbollah in 2006. But even that may not be enough.

“Hezbollah’s ability to wage a war of attrition, destroying life across much of northern Israel and inflicting painful costs on Israel shows that it is regaining operational stability,” Sobelman, the international security expert, told CNN.

He said that in guerrilla wars, what is often most important is the weaker actor’s ability to carry on, fight and inflict casualties on the other side.

As the IDF death toll rises in the war against Hezbollah, it is clear that the militant group is determined to continue despite the severe setbacks it has suffered.