No immediate plans for major operation against Hezbollah, sources say

By admin On Sep 19, 2024

Multiple sources have indicated that despite the successful wounding of thousands of Hezbollah operatives through the mass device sabotage on Tuesday and Wednesday, there is no imminent plan for the IDF to undertake a new major operation against Hezbollah, let alone a large ground invasion.

Various sources have said that the original plan was to only employ the mass device sabotage in the event of a simultaenous larger operation.

But now that the sabotage happened (and was possibly forced to be used prematurely as Hezbollah started to discover the potential sabotage), sources indicate that the IDF is under instructions from the cabinet to wait and see what Hezbollah will do next before making a major move.

If Hezbollah starts to move pieces for a significant strike of its own as it did on August 25, there are indications that the military would preempt such a threat as it did on August 25, and possibly even on a larger scale.

Israeli security forces at the scene where a missile fired from Lebanon hit an open area near the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona, September 4, 2024 (credit: AYAL MARGOLIN/FLASH90)

Despite the above, sources have implied that the IDF and the government are still concerned about the vast inventory of Hezbollah rockets (150,000 pre-war) and the possibility of a wider regional war with Iran and its other proxies.

Military actions against Hamas, Houthis

This also seems to be the reason that Israel still has yet to respond to the ballistic missile which Yemen’s Houthis fired on Israel on Sunday. Despite the fact that when Yemen struck Tel Aviv in July, the IDF responded by destroying parts of Yemen’s crucial port of Hodeidah within 48 hours in order to deter the Houthis from further adventurism.

With the IDF’s attention officially primarily having shifted to the North and Hezbollah, sources have indicated that the military’s activities in Gaza are now limited to occasionally targeted killings of medium-level commanders, destroying Hamas infrastructure, and trying to set traps for Hamas terrorists who might come out of hiding.

The IDF was unable to provide any cogent answer to the question of how these activities will in any way advance the goal of compelling Hamas to release the 101 remaining living hostages and hostages remains, given that greater force already used throughout Gaza has not done so.

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