TEL AVIV – The Israeli military demonstrated on Tuesday that it takes seriously Hezbollah’s repeated threats to “take over the Galilee” with a massive drill aimed at evacuating civilians under attack near the Lebanon border.
Described as “the biggest drill of its kind until now,” Col. Eyal Forman, chief medical officer in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Homefront Command, said the exercise was driven by war threat scenarios involving Hezbollah forces “crossing the border and getting to the settlements.”
In a briefing to reporters here, Forman said Tuesday’s drill was not based on a specific threat or intelligence information, but rather on lessons learned from Israel’s 2006 Lebanon war, when civilians were left to their own devices.
In addition to the rocket and missile threat, he said the specter of coordinated, cross-border attacks by infantry was something that has “become more obvious in the last few years.”
“The threat wasn’t as real then as it is now. We didn’t have the infantry threat in Lebanon II,” Forman said of that 2006 war.
He noted that the scenario for Tuesday’s drill took place “after a few days of war,” following an Israeli government decision to evacuate civilians.
“This was definitely a lesson from Lebanon II, because then people mostly evacuated themselves to safe areas. We realized we needed to support them and be more active in this regard,” he said.
For more than five years, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly threatened to take over northern Israel by force.
In one of his earliest threats, from a February 2011 interview with the organization’s al-Manar television network, Nasrallah said: “I’m telling the fighters of the Islamic resistance to be ready for the day, should war be forced upon Lebanon, where the resistance’s leadership will ask you to take over the Galilee.”
Twitter: @opallrome
