by Barbara Opall-Rome
Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel: "I am certain that if war breaks out on the northern front, we need to take strong action from the word 'go.' ”
HERZLIYA, Israel — The next war in Lebanon will be so powerfully
punishing — with thousands of targets struck in the first day of an
attack — that hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians will have to
leave their homes or risk falling victim to “collateral damage,”
according to top Israeli military commanders here.
“I have good news for the people of Lebanon,” Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel, the
commander of Israel's Air Force, told participants at the Herzliya
Conference on Wednesday. “Since Hezbollah has decided to be in urban
areas, in those closed apartments where they launch rockets, if the
people of Lebanon are to leave those houses before an event begins, they
will not be in harm’s way.
"I am certain that if war breaks out on the northern front, we need to take strong action from the word 'go.' ”
According to Eshel, Israeli air power — both qualitatively and
quantitatively — “will surprise our rivals in ways they can’t even
perceive.” He noted, presumably in reference to Israel’s war in Gaza
during the summer of 2014, that the Israeli Air Force “has had [the]
opportunity to test ourselves, so what I’m saying is not just a theory.”
Eshel noted that the lethality of Israeli air power, despite
“unprecedented precision,” has “some potential to damage those who are
uninvolved,” which presents limitations to Israeli war planners.
“This limitation, too, is taken into consideration. I don’t want to go
into too much detail, but we are trying to limit this as much as
possible. Morally speaking, we want to make that collateral damage as
little as possible. Not zero. I don’t want to delude myself. But as
little as possible.”
Eshel declined to explain how Lebanese civilians would leave their
homes, where they would go or who would be responsible for the
evacuation. But Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, Israel’s top military officer,
indicated that evacuations would be done by Israel.
In an address the previous evening to the same Herzliya gathering,
Eisenkot, the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, spoke
about “hundreds of thousands of civilians” who would need to be
evacuated in Israel’s next war with the Lebanese-based Hezbollah
militant organization.
“The moment we know the enemy goes into urban terrain, it becomes a
matter of morals and values. There are hundreds of thousands in the
civilian population. We’ll need to evacuate them … and we’ll have to do
that as quickly as possible. We need to preserve legitimacy while
fighting,” Eisenkot said.
Israel’s top military officer declined to say how such an evacuation
would be carried out without civilian consent or how Israel could
possibly venture such an undertaking without ruining the element of a
surprise attack and putting large numbers of Israeli forces in danger.
He noted, however, that the Air Force is capable of striking “thousands of targets a day should we be required to do so.”
Eisenkot, a former commander of Northern Command with territorial
responsibility for Lebanon and Syria, served as the IDF’s director of
operations during Israel’s last war in Lebanon in 2006. In the 11 years
since that war, he said, Israeli intelligence, air power and ground
maneuvering capabilities have improved tremendously as a result of
significant investment and training.
The IDF chief charged Hezbollah with “crudely violating” United Nations
Resolution 1701, which mandated demilitarization of the area beyond
Israel’s northern border, and claimed 240 villages and towns in south
Lebanon would be legitimate targets in the next war. “We have very good
intelligence, and we know them well. Hezbollah has 240 villages and
towns where almost every third or fourth house has some Hezbollah force
in it.”
Additionally, he said, Hezbollah has built up “thousands of underground
locations” and “many tens of thousands of rockets and other
capabilities,” most of which has been provided by Iran.
According to Eisenkot, Hezbollah is now heavily immersed in fighting in
Syria alongside Russia on behalf of the regime of Syrian President
Bashar Assad. This accruing military experience is something Israel
“cannot ignore,” he said. At the same time, Hezbollah has lost some
1,800 combatants over the last three years and suffered some 8,000
wounded.
The IDF chief acknowledged that Israel has made “great efforts” to stop
Iranian- or Syrian-supplied arms from reaching Hezbollah, actions that
until recently have been neither confirmed nor denied by Israeli
officials. “Preventing weapons from reaching the hands of Hezbollah is a
top priority for the IDF,” he said.
He also asserted that Hezbollah was taking possession of Russian
weaponry without authorization. “Russian weapons are getting into their
hands under the noses of the Russians without their approval,” Eisenkot
said.
In his June 21 address, Eshel, the Air Force commander, said that since
the 2006 Lebanon War, Israeli air power has improved to the point that
it will now take the service only 40 to 60 hours to strike the number of
targets attacked during the entire 34-day war 11 years ago. “I’m saying
that quantitatively speaking we have doubled or quadrupled [the ability
to generate and attack targets].”
Nevertheless, Eshel acknowledged that in the next Lebanon war — due to
Hezbollah’s acquisition of advanced capabilities — Israel should expect a
worse-case scenario where it sustains fire on some of its air bases
and/or airborne air assets. But, he insisted, “these two factors — fire
on Air Force bases and threats on aircraft … cannot stop our Air Force.
“This huge machine that is the sum of surprise, quality and quantity
will work. Don’t misunderstand me. There is no magic solution or spell.
But it is a potent power and a lot more than anyone can estimate.”
Barbara Opall-Rome
Source: http://www.defensenews.com/articles/israeli-commanders-reveal-plans-for-mass-evacuation-of-lebanese-civilians-in-next-war
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