Israel has provided the United Nations and the Lebanese army extensive intelligence proving that Hezbollah has dug cross-border attack tunnels from Lebanon into Israel, but they have so far neglected to take action to confront the matter.
The Israel Defense Forces launched “Operation Northern Shield” on Dec. 4 with the goal of neutralizing the Shi’ite terrorist group’s attack tunnels. The military has not disclosed how many tunnels snake into Israeli territory from Lebanon or how long the operation is going to last.
“The Lebanese military and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon are still not doing anything to seal the tunnel shafts,” said IDF Spokesperson Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis.
Manelis said that the IDF provided UNIFIL with exact coordinates of where tunnels had been dug from specific homes in Ramyeh, a Lebanese village close to the border.
The IDF began to destroy some of the cross-border tunnels from the Israeli side of the border last week and is expected to neutralize more this week.
One tunnel will be kept intact, allowing ambassadors, journalists and others to get a firsthand look at what a Hezbollah attack tunnel looks like.
IDF officials believe that Hezbollah will not take aggressive action against Israel as long as the operation remains confined to Israeli territory only.
Residents of Zarit, in the Upper Galilee and just meters from Israel’s border with Lebanon, say the IDF activity in the area continues days after the IDF destroyed a nearby tunnel.
“It felt like an earthquake, and then there was a huge explosion,” Zarit resident Liat Cohen told Israel Hayom. “There are still a lot of troops in the area; it feels like a war zone.”
