Israel makes commando-style incursions into Lebanon as leaders hint invasion is imminent

Israel appears to have moved one big step closer to a ground invasion of Lebanon by amassing troops and heavy armour near its northern border and mounting commando-style incursions into the country to test the Hezbollah militia’s reaction strength.

The widespread reports of the incursions Monday came as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant strongly hinted that a ground invasion is imminent. “We will use all our capabilities, including you,” he told troops of the 188th Armoured Brigade and the Golani Brigade.

He said that returning some 60,000 Israelis to their homes near the border with Lebanon, where Hezbollah rocket fire has forced them to flee, was the mission of the Israel Defense Forces. “This is what we will do, and we will deploy whatever is needed – you, other forces, from the air, from the sea, from the land.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a TV address aimed at Iran, Hezbollah’s prime sponsor, reinforced Mr. Gallant’s message by insisting “there is nowhere that we will not go to protect our people and to protect our country.”

Israel has said it wants to push all Hezbollah weapons and fighters north of the Litani river that bisects southern Lebanon. On Monday, Israel announced a closed military zone in Metula, Misgav Am and Kfar Giladi, the three towns in northeast Israel closest to the Litani.

An Israeli source whose son is serving at the Lebanon border told The Globe that commanders of the unit had taken the soldiers’ mobile phones away around dusk on Monday, in what could be an information security measure ahead of sending the troops across the border.

The reported Israeli incursions on Monday were described as fairly small and targeted Hezbollah artillery positions near the border. They were also designed to gather intelligence and test the group’s response, but there were no immediate reports of fighting between IDF troops and Hezbollah militants on Lebanese soil.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told a briefing in Washington that Israel had informed the White House that it was conducting “limited” ground operations inside Lebanon.

“This is what they have informed us that they are currently conducting, which are limited operations targeting Hezbollah infrastructure near the border,” Mr. Miller said. Asked to confirm that he was referring to ground operations, Mr. Miller said: “That is our understanding.”

In a video address Monday, Hezbollah deputy leader Naim Qassem – leader Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated Friday in an Israeli air strike in southern Beirut – said the group was prepared to resist an invasion. He said it had only used a fraction of its fighting capability, including long-range missiles.

He warned that “the battle might be long,” but “we will be steadfast. … We will continue facing the Israeli enemy in support of Palestine and Gaza and in defence of the Lebanese people.”

In an effort to further degrade Hezbollah’s fighting capabilities, the IDF continued its air strikes Monday on Hezbollah targets. Among the hardest-hit areas was the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, which analysts identified as a possible point of incursion by the IDF. For the first time since 2006, Israel also struck central Beirut, killing three leaders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The IDF said it had also killed Fateh Sherif, a Hamas leader in Lebanon who had been responsible for relations with Hezbollah. Hamas said he was killed in an air strike in a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, near the city of Tyre.

Hezbollah began launching rockets at northern Israel on Oct. 8 in “solidarity” with Hamas, which the previous day had launched a surprise invasion of southern Israel from Gaza that left more than 1,100 people dead and saw more than 200 Israelis and foreigners taken hostage. More than 41,600 Palestinians have since been killed in Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza, according to the Palestinian health authority. Much of Gaza has been reduced to rubble, even as more than 100 hostages remain unaccounted for.

Questions about Hezbollah’s ability to deter an Israeli invasion abounded Monday. More than a week of strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs have killed at least a dozen top commanders of the group, including Mr. Nasrallah, its chief strategist and driving force. Some weapon depots have also been destroyed.

On Sept. 18 and 19, thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah exploded, killing 42 people and wounding thousands in what was certainly the group’s most devastating security breach. The attack, widely seen to be the work of Israel’s security and intelligence services, has damaged Hezbollah commanders’ and fighters’ ability to communicate with one another. Israel has not officially taken responsibility for the attack.

Mr. Nasrallah oversaw Hezbollah’s rise to become the world’s largest non-state fighting force, with an estimated 40,000 to 100,000 fighters and a rocket count of equal size or greater. (Canada, the United States and other countries consider it a “terrorist” group.) However, Mr. Nasrallah made mistakes late in his career that compromised the group’s strength, said Ghassan Moukheiber, a lawyer who was a member of the Lebanese parliament for 16 years, until 2018.

“Hezbollah mistakes were that it misread the capacities of Israel, overrated its own capacities and failed to develop anti-aircraft and anti-drone capabilities,” he said in an interview with The Globe and Mail. The “Israelis’ booby-trapping the pagers and walkie-talkies was amazing.”

Opinion: After Hezbollah’s miscalculations, it has lost much of its power

Lebanese say Israeli surveillance drones fly over Beirut and other parts of the country regularly and are rarely shot down.

But Mr. Moukheiber said counting Hezbollah out as a fighting force because its top commanders have been killed would be a mistake. He said the militants operate as guerrillas and will fight without taking orders from above. “They operate differently than a classic army. … It is decentralized, and the decision-making is decentralized.”

Amine Kammourieh, a prominent Lebanese journalist and regular commentator for Al-Jazeera, agreed that Hezbollah still had ample weapons and fighting capability, but the death of Mr. Nasrallah, whom he described as the “idol” of Hezbollah fighters and Lebanese Shia Muslims, delivered a psychological blow to the group.

“The hardest job will be for the new Hezbollah leader to get the people to believe in him,” he said. “Nasrallah was their hero. The Shia would die for Nasrallah. They might not die for Hezbollah. Hezbollah does not have a big problem on the military side. They have a big problem on the psychological side.”

As of Monday evening, local time, Hezbollah had yet to announce Mr. Nasrallah’s replacement. A leading candidate is widely thought to be Hashem Safieddine, the Shia cleric who has served as the head of group’s executive council since 2001 and is a maternal cousin to Mr. Nasrallah.

Mr. Moukheiber said “he is more likely to be tougher than Nasrallah in military engagement with the Israelis.”