IDF soldiers entered southern Lebanon as part of a ground assault on Monday night as the conflict with Hezbollah continues to escalate, AFP reported.
Shortly thereafter, Arabic media such as Al-Jazeera and MTV Lebanon claimed that IDF tanks had entered multiple villages in southern Lebanon.
“This is what they have informed us that they are currently conducting, which are limited operations targeting Hezbollah infrastructure near the border,” US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said to the press on Monday, according to AFP.
The IDF has yet to announce or confirm that any such ground invasion, the first IDF ground operation in Lebanon since the Second Lebanon War in 2006, has been launched.
However, the IDF Spokesperson in Arabic, Avichay Adraee, warned residents of Beirut suburbs to evacuate on Monday night.
Shortly after, IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari asked the media not to “share reports about the forces’ activities, due to the security of our forces. Stick to the official reports only and do not spread irresponsible rumors.”
The IDF and the Lebanese army started making moves around 9:00 pm. regarding the imminent Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
The IDF at 8:39 p.m. took additional last-minute concrete measures leading toward an invasion, declaring closed military zones at Metulla, Misgav Am, and Kfar Giladi.
Shortly after, the Lebanese army started withdrawing from several positions in southern Lebanon.
Unconfirmed reports indicated that the IDF opened up with massive tank fire at specific positions in southern Lebanon.
Earlier Monday evening, The Jerusalem Post had reported that the invasion of Lebanon could start the moment that the security cabinet approves, sources have told the Jerusalem Post.
The cabinet, which started to meet on the issue at 7:30 p.m., was given multiple choices for what kind of invasion to choose from, though the expected initial focus is still southern Lebanon.
A key focus of the invasion will be to remove the infrastructure that Hezbollah’s Radwan special forces could have tried to use to invade Israel and threaten the northern border towns.
In addition, US President Joe Biden and a wave of US officials have been warning of an imminent Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon to start later Monday.
The clock toward an IDF ground invasion of southern Lebanon started to move ahead much faster than expected even a day or so ago as signs of Hezbollah’s weakness grew in recent days.
Senior IDF sources have been extremely surprised at how ineffective Hezbollah has been at responding to the military’s onslaught against it over the last two weeks and in particular since Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated this past Friday.
They also said as recently as Sunday night that a significant majority of Hezbollah’s capability to retaliate on the Israeli home front has been harmed and makes it far more reduced than might have been expected.
Although when Israel started to pummel Hezbollah around two weeks ago, it believed it could achieve some element of surprise and degrade the Lebanese terror group somewhat in terms of retaliation, the Home Front Command slapping restrictions on the entire North, including Haifa, was a foreshadowing of concern that the IDF expected Haifa could get hit very hard.
Instead, not a single person in Haifa has been killed by Hezbollah, and the city has barely been touched. Likewise, much of the southern portions of the North that were expected to be hit hard for the first time by Hezbollah’s longer-range rockets have felt minimal impact compared to the dark forecast.
In fact, not a single Israeli has been killed by Hezbollah since Nasrallah was killed three days ago.
Cities like Safed, Acre, Nahariya, Kiryat Shmona, and villages farther North, which have been under short-range rocket fire for extended periods, remain so. Still, that level of threat is nowhere near the strategic level threat that the IDF expected Hezbollah to pose – potentially killing thousands of Israelis and ravaging Tel Aviv and critical infrastructure.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s statements to the Tank Corps and other statements to northern town leaders on Monday that he expected to be using ground forces soon against Hezbollah was not just a throwaway statement but a true statement of intent, the Jerusalem Post understands.
The fact that key IDF officials on Monday were confirming that a significant majority of Hezbollah’s capabilities have been harmed, whereas on Friday many top IDF officials were warning that such statements were hubris, seems to indicate how the vacuum of Hezbollah’s response extending over several days has shifted the defense establishment’s view about how deeply Hezbollah is reeling.
There was also no real statement by Hezbollah about the war from Friday until Monday, and even on Monday it is unclear who will replace Nasrallah or when such an announcement will be made. In other words, it is unclear who is running Hezbollah now and who, and whether, a central leader will be running it if an IDF invasion starts relatively soon.
IDF officials have been cancelling planned interviews for emergency meetings which signal that “all hands” are being called in for the invasion just as footage of more and more forces moving North has been streaming across social media.
A public leak to the Wall Street Journal early Monday about small special forces targeted Israeli incursions into southern Lebanon to prepare the area for a larger attack, including starting to deal with tunnel ambush issues, also could be preparing the Israeli public and the world for the reality of a fuller ground invasion.
This is especially true because the idea of Israeli forces making small incursions into Lebanon is not actually new, and has been a well-kept secret for months, with only foreign media being able to report on it.
Sources have told the Post that a decision is still not final about the shape and size of the ground invasion, though initially it is expected to be limited to portions of southern Lebanon.
Israel is sensitive to US and Western concerns to not be viewed as occupiers in Lebanon and to only frame the invasion in terms of restoring UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which obligated Hezbollah to remain North of the Litani River.
In addition, a sudden Hezbollah success against Israel, or readiness to negotiate, or sudden increased pressure from the US to not invade could also delay an invasion, but at press time, all of the momentum is moving toward a ground invasion and sooner than expected even a day or so ago.
Biden’s criticism of the invasion on Monday seems to have been viewed by Israel as almost pro forma, given that there was no threat nor was there any presentation of an imminent diplomatic solution that Hezbollah would accept.
Earlier Monday, the IDF also destroyed a warehouse of surface-to-air missile launchers that Hezbollah had placed just 1.5 kilometers from Lebanon’s Beirut International Airport, the military said on Monday.
In their statement, the IDF said that the placement of these missiles was a threat to the international airspace for passenger planes and could hit any aircraft flying into the Lebanese airspace.
In addition, the IDF destroyed a wide range of long-range and medium-range missiles and rockets, which could threaten Haifa, central Israel, and the Tel Aviv Corridor.
Further, the IDF eliminated the Hezbollah terrorist Eid Hassan, the commander of Hezbollah’s medium-range rocket array, the military said on Monday.
Hassan had served as Hezbollah’s commander of the surface-to-surface rocket unit.
His killing goes along with the targeted killings of several other top rocket and drone Hezbollah commanders on Monday and in recent days.
This follows earlier reports that Israel notified the US that it intends to launch a limited ground operation into Lebanon that could begin within hours, a US official confirmed to CBS on Monday. Other news sources have reported that an Israeli incursion could come within the coming days.
Israeli-Hezbollah tensions boil over into open war
The report of an IDF invasion follows an ongoing pattern of escalation between Hezbollah and the IDF since the start of the Israel-Hamas War. On Friday, the IDF carried out an airstrike on Hezbollah’s central headquarters, killing former secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah.
Previous IDF strikes have killed numerous senior Hezbollah terrorists in recent weeks, including a strike on Beirut that killed at least 16 high-ranking Hezbollah members, including Hezbollah’s Operations Division chief Ibrahim Aliq.
This also follows a series of widespread incidents throughout Lebanon and Syria where several communications devices owned by members of Hezbollah, such as pagers and radios, mysteriously exploded, killing several and wounding thousands. Hezbollah and foreign reports accused Israel of being behind the incidents.
The Iran-backed terrorist group has also been firing numerous rockets, drones, and missiles at the Jewish state since the start of the Israel-Hamas War, with the frequent barrages forcing tens of thousands of Israelis to flee from their homes in the North.
