Bombs at the Border: Israel Threatens Offensive on Another Front

First comes the thump of outgoing shelling from the Israeli side of the Lebanon border towards suspected Hezbollah guerrillas.

In barely a minute, the detonation of mortar bombs resounds near the fortified Israeli outpost, perched by the fence on the ridge line between the two countries.

Soldiers scramble into concrete bunkers.

"We've come under quite heavy mortar fire all along the border," said reserve Israeli paratroop Sergeant Ben, who was not authorized to give his surname. "The booms are right on top of us," he told Newsweek inside a bunker. Nobody was wounded from the fire at the outpost on Sunday.

Hezbollah later said it had fired at a range of Israeli targets along the border, according to Reuters.

Such firing happens at least daily near the Dvornit outpost. Attacks have been escalating all along the border since the unprecedented October 7 raid on Israel from the Gaza Strip by Hamas, an ally of Hezbollah in Iran's so-called "Axis of Resistance" against Israel.

It marks by far the worst violence at the border since Israeli forces invaded southern Lebanon in a 2006 war against Hezbollah.

But even as Israel wages its biggest war in decades inside Gaza to the south, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said preparations had been made to shift from a "defensive posture" and open a full-scale assault into Lebanon if diplomacy does not stop Hezbollah attacks and ensure the Shiite group can no longer threaten a farming region of Israel from which tens of thousands of people have been evacuated.

"I think that there is a window of opportunity for peace or stability," Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus told reporters on a visit to the border at the now largely deserted Kibbutz Rosh HaNikra.

"If those things won't work, the IDF, as the defence forces of the state of Israel will have to make sure that Israeli civilians are safe... The IDF is prepared, has been preparing. The Chief of Staff has approved plans and has defined schedules for readiness.

"If need be, just as we are now dismantling Hamas in Gaza, and going about making sure that there won't be a military threat against Israelis living in southern Israel, we will do the same thing if needed against Hezbollah."

Conricus said five Israeli civilians and nine soldiers had been killed near the border since October 7 in some 1,000 attacks with rockets, anti-tank missiles, attack drones, mortars and other munitions. Reuters said that 94 Hezbollah fighters and 17 civilians were among at least 130 killed in Lebanon over that period.

Better Armed than Hamas

Close to 19,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's Gaza offensive, according to authorities in the Hamas-run territory, while 1,200 Israelis were killed in the initial Hamas attack and more than 100 soldiers have been killed in Gaza. Hamas also holds scores of Israeli hostages.

But Hezbollah is far bigger and far better armed than Hamas—with an arsenal that Israel estimates at up to 200,000 rockets. Any major border war would also have the potential to ignite a regional conflagration that could risk drawing in Iran and Israel's U.S. ally, which sent two aircraft carriers to the region after the initial Hamas attack in a show of force.

Newsweek emailed Hezbollah for comment on the Israeli threat.

Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem last week defended the campaign against Israel as a duty.

"We will not bow to any signal from any side that talks about a settlement, weakening or putting an end to this weapon," Qassem said on the group's official media website. "It is force that makes us live in our country independently and with its head held high, and it makes us able to face challenges and put an end to the brutality that grows and spreads."

Newsweek contacted Lebanon's defense ministry for comment.

For Israel, the pressure to end the threat in the north is intensified by the fact that 86,000 people fled or were ordered from the area after October 7 in fear that Hezbollah could mount a similar attack at multiple points and carry out killings and abductions.

The green expanse stretching southward from the rocky pine and scrub of the borderline is normally one of the most productive regions in Israel. It accounts for 70 percent of its eggs. Fruit farms grow apples, oranges, kiwis and bananas.

The farms in the Galilee region are being cared for by pensioners and teenage volunteers bused in for the day as residents shelter in hotels or with family or friends.

Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 in "Operation Peace for Galilee" after repeated raids by Palestinian commandos. It only withdrew completely in 2000. Israeli forces returned in 2006 after Hezbollah abducted two soldiers in a cross-border raid. More than 1,000 Lebanese were reported dead and more than 160 Israelis in that month-long war.

Under the terms of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, from that time, Lebanon was supposed to be demilitarized from the Litani River to the Israeli border other than Lebanese army soldiers and the 10,000 strong U.N. Peacekeeping Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

The Litani is some 15 miles north of Dvornit although it is less than three miles from the border at some points.

"Today, 1701 has been gutted, hollowed out by Hezbollah and there's not even a remnant of it on the ground," Conricus said, accusing the guerrilla group of firing from close to U.N. and Lebanese army posts in order to draw Israeli fire onto them.

Newsweek contacted the U.N. force for comment.

UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti told Newsweek last week that peacekeepers were deeply concerned by the escalation of violence and rhetoric.