Israel: al-Assad will hit Tel Aviv in any future war with Hezbollah

It became the relationship of the same battle and the common destiny. If Tel Aviv decides to launch a new war against Hezbollah, al-Assad will not hesitate to intervene, said a high-ranking Israeli officer while reviewing and “estimating” the situation in front of senior military Israeli reporters who were discussing the latest developments on the northern front and a series of operations on the border with Lebanon and Syria. 
 
If Israel has sought recently to change the “rules of confrontation” with Hezbollah, and to test whether it is able to strike the Lebanese arena without responses, it is now experiencing a different stage: it is using all its potentials to stop the operations against its army on the border, what means it is trying to prevent the crystallization of another equation imposed by the other party: carrying out operations against the army and returning to the stage of “expropriating” its units. 

“A high-ranking Israeli officer” is how the Hebrew media refers to any officer with the rank of major general in the General Staff, including Deputy Chief of Staff. The news website “Times of Israel” cited the officer as saying that “Hezbollah’s sacrifice in Syria created what might be called as the bond of blood between al-Assad and Hezbollah, and the Syrian president became willing to put himself at risk in order to preserve it”. He added that “the transfer of advanced weapons that exceeded the red lines as considered by Israel, as well as al-Assad’s willingness to enter the war alongside Hezbollah if Israel was forced to launch a war against that Lebanese organization, are issues upon which al-Assad’s relationship with its ally was based”. 

He pointed to prevailing estimates among the army regarding the reality of the coming war and its complexity at the Syrian level, saying that “Syria will spare no effort to help Hezbollah in the next war”. He added that “according to the Army’s hypothesis of action, the war with Hezbollah would necessitates a Syrian response that would be represented in two directions: firing rockets at Israel, where the weight of each one of them would be one ton and would fall on Tel Aviv, and activating the terrorist operations along the border in the Golan Heights”. 

Answering a question about the shape of the next war with Hezbollah, he pointed out that “Hezbollah has the eighth-largest arsenal of missiles in the world, and has made several changes to its existing combat doctrine, what makes the war more terrible”. He continued adding that “the intelligence estimates indicate that Hezbollah possesses more than 100,000 missiles, with accurate and high destructive capacities, and this means that we will face the falling of 3000 rockets by Hezbollah every day”. 

In addition to that, the officer pointed out that the Hezbollah fighters had gained noteworthy combat experience during their fighting against the Syrian “rebels” and “this is a valuable experience”. He said that “This issue raises our concerns and fears much” regarding the ground war with Hezbollah. 

Returning to the operations of the border in the Golan Heights and in the Shebaa Farms, the officer lamented what has been stated in the reports issued by the Israeli army two weeks ago about lifting the “security fence” along the border with Syria, which is said to be able to prevent the violations or infiltration of hostile groups. According to the officer, “there are a million lessons taught from the explosive of the Golan, and these lessons are not good”.
However, he stressed that “the conclusions and the study of the explosives on the 14th and 18th of this present month in the Golan Heights and the Shebaa Farms are not done yet”. 

Yet, what caused the failure of the soldiers on the border? The officer explains to the reporters a group of reasons that caused that failure, and the foremost that “they had no experience, did not serve in southern Lebanon, did not fight in the security zone, and did not face any roadside bomb in all their practical lives. Therefore, it was difficult to understand what to do, how to interpret the threats, and the way that should be followed to meet them”. 

The Hebrew media continued yesterday reporting the Israeli army estimates about “the recent operations on the northern border”. The “Haaretz” newspaper mentioned that the army officers reached to a conclusion that these operations were “carried out by professionals”, pointing out that “the quality of the explosives, and the fact that the area is controlled by al-Assad and Hezbollah, have strengthened the intelligence conclusions that these operations are a coordinated action by al-Assad regime, with the help of Hezbollah”. 

The newspaper pointed out that the problem of the North (with Syria and Lebanon) is that things could become out of control, and “a series of sudden blows is enough to drag the border to a torrid situation”. According to the newspaper, both Syria and Hezbollah are worried of the air strikes “attributed to Israel” against the arms convoys on the border, “what led the (Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah) to threaten to respond. In fact, three attacks from the Syrian border were recorded, as well as one from the Lebanese border, and this is an attempt to push Israel to be indecisive before deciding to launch a new raid”. 

The flip side of the operation as seen by Israel, according to “Haaretz”, is that Tel Aviv is seeking to prevent a new formula imposed by the enemies that is in consistent with its interest, in the context of the fact that the enemy, Hezbollah and Syria, are also seeking to foil Israel’s attempts to impose the equation of preventing “the smuggling of arms”. “Israel fears the starting of a war of attrition on the border, just as the case was during the time of the security zone in Lebanon. This means that this stage is the stage of deterring an opponent so as not to continue the operations, and Israel finds it difficult to install the balance of deterrence on the northern border”.