Israeli Special Forces Launch Raids Into Lebanon Ahead of Possible Ground Incursion
The raids are aimed at gathering intelligence and probing Hezbollah’s capabilities
Israeli special forces have been carrying out small, targeted raids into southern Lebanon, gathering intelligence and probing ahead of a possible broader ground incursion that could come as soon as this week, people familiar with the matter said.
The raids, which have included entering Hezbollah’s tunnels located along the border, have occurred recently as well as over the past months, part of the broader effort by Israel to degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities along the border dividing Israel and Lebanon, the people said.
The timing of any ground action could change, the people said. Israel is under heavy pressure from the U.S. not to carry out a major invasion. It wasn’t immediately clear how long Israel would aim to hold territory, or whether the incursion would be more like a series of larger raids.
Amir Avivi, a former senior Israeli military official who continues to be briefed by the defense establishment, said a ground incursion by Israel is imminent and that the raids are part of the preparation.
“The IDF has made a lot of preparations for a ground incursion,” Avivi said. “Overall, this always includes special operations. This is part of the process.”
Hezbollah appears so weakened that Israel’s dilemma would actually be how far Israel should go into Lebanon, Avivi said. When and under what terms Israel would leave remain unclear, he said.
A broader ground incursion would be highly provocative in the region and a further blow to a country scarred by previous invasions that ended in 2000 and 2006. Israel’s government is under pressure to create a buffer zone to stop Hezbollah attacks that have forced some 60,000 people from their homes in the north and prevent the sort of cross-border attack that Hamas led against Israel on Oct. 7, which many in the country still fear. Hezbollah has threatened for years to invade parts of northern Israel.
A senior Israeli official said last week that the country hoped to avoid a ground invasion. It has, however, been building up its forces in the north with the shift in focus to the fight with Hezbollah and now has more on that front than anywhere else in the country.
Israel’s military chief told troops last week that airstrikes against Hezbollah were in preparation for a potential ground invasion of Lebanon.
“We are preparing the process of a maneuver, which means your military boots, your maneuvering boots, will enter enemy territory,” the Israeli military chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, said in the comments to Israeli troops at the country’s northern border with Lebanon.
The U.S. and Arab countries have consistently said they want a diplomatic solution to the crisis, warning of the risk of a regional war.
The U.S. also has beefed up its forces in the region to deter countries such as Iran from getting involved and to be prepared to respond to any escalation.
The Pentagon said Sunday it would keep the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and its accompanying ships near the Red Sea. The Lincoln had been expected to leave when the USS Harry S. Truman carrier strike group arrived. The Truman will now be operating near the Mediterranean Sea. It is unusual for the U.S. to keep two carriers in the region.
A ground operation would follow two weeks of elaborate intelligence operations, targeted killings and heavy bombardments aimed at degrading the U.S.-designated terrorist group’s command and control and weapons stores. Israel conducted airstrikes on more than 2,000 targets last week, in its heaviest bombardment of Lebanon in years, the military has said.
Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah with a massive airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs Friday, flattening part of a neighborhood to eliminate the cleric who led the group for three decades and built it into a fearsome foe.
The week before, thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies carried by Hezbollah members exploded virtually simultaneously, killing 37 people and injuring around 3,000. Shortly afterward, an airstrike in Beirut killed a group of more than a dozen elite military leaders.
Hezbollah began firing across the Lebanon-Israel border shortly after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and sparked the war in Gaza. The two foes have traded fire almost daily since then, depopulating strips along both sides of the border and raising concerns of escalation into a wider war.
Over that period, more than 11,000 projectiles have been fired from Lebanon into Israel, according to an Israeli official. Israel in turn struck Lebanon more than 8,000 times by air, drone, missile and artillery through Sept. 20, before the latest round of heavy Israeli bombardment, according to the nonprofit Armed Conflict Location and Event Data.
Write to Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com, Stephen Kalin at stephen.kalin@wsj.com and Anat Peled at anat.peled@wsj.com