HEZBOLLAH MEMBERS wave Hezbollah and Lebanese flags during a 2015 rally in southern Lebanon marking the anniversary of the end of the terrorist organization’s 2006 war with Israel… (photo credit: AZIZ TAHER/REUTERS)
Israel’s military will provide anti-missile protection to 20 strategic sites across the country as well as build additional hardened aircraft hangers to protect against the threat posed by Hezbollah’s missile arsenal.
According to a report in Jane’s Defense Weekly, the Israeli Air Force is looking to build an unspecified number of strengthened aircraft hangars at a cost of USD 10 million in an area of about 4,000 m2.
In addition, according to a report in Haaretz, the IDF’s Home Front Command will strengthen the protection of several key sites across the country with walls of reinforced concrete, stronger ceilings, blast-proof doors, and anti-shrapnel protection.
The IDF believes that the next war on the northern border will not be contained to one front but along the entire northern border with both Lebanon and Syria. The military also expects that during the next war Hezbollah will try to bring the fight to the home front by infiltrating Israeli communities to inflict significant civilian and military casualties.
Last year the head of the Home Front command warned that 2.5 million Israelis do not have adequate protection from Hezbollah missiles and the government later designated an extra NIS 150 million for work to strengthen buildings around the country from rocket attacks.
In April Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said that while Israel boasts about their missile defense system, it cannot defend the country’s citizens against the threat posed by Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal.
Israel and Hezbollah last fought a war – the Second Lebanon War – in 2006 and has since then morphed from a guerrilla group to an army with a set hierarchy and procedures. While Hezbollah is not believed to possess any precision missiles, it has rebuilt its arsenal since 2006 and has hundreds of thousands of short-range rockets and several thousand more missiles that can reach deeper into Israel.
In an interview with Hezbollah al-Manar, TV Nasrallah on Friday warned that “the 70-kilometer Israeli coast starting from Netanya and ending at Ashdod is under the resistance fire”
Pulling out a map of Israel, Nasrallah pointed to strategic targets, which he said Hezbollah could hit, including Ben Gurion Airport, arms depots, petrochemical and water desalination plants, Tel Aviv and the Ashdod port.
Nasrallah said that there will be “surprises on the ground, in the air and at sea” in the next war between the two enemies, adding that while the Lebanese Shiite group has game-changing weapons.
“Any war will be bigger than the 2006 war for Israel and it will put it on the brink of extinction,” he warned.
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