The next war between Israel and Hezbollah will be “very nasty” because the Iranian-backed terrorist group stores its weapons in residential neighborhoods, a former Israeli National Security Advisor told Armin Rosen in an interview published in Tablet on Sunday.
“Think of about 120,000 rockets and missiles, 50 percent or 80 percent of them stored by the Iranians within populated areas in private houses. Areas will be evaporated,” Maj. Gen. (res) Yaacov Amidror, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s advisor from 2011 to 2013, explained.
“Think about a missile of half a ton, with all the fuel in it, and Israel hits it with only 100 grams of TNT. … Think about what will be damaged just by the stored missiles. Thousands and thousands of Lebanese will be killed and part of Lebanon will be destroyed.”
Israel will be forced to strike Hezbollah’s missiles on the ground because, as good as Israel’s missile defenses are, Hezbollah has an arsenal of “thousands and thousands” of precision guided missiles aimed at all Israeli population centers. If Hezbollah were to engage in a war with Israel, Amidror said, “Israelis will be killed, no question.”
Once when former United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon visited Israel, Amidror recalled that he asked the diplomat, “These missiles will be launched into Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Afula, everywhere. What is your advice to Israel? And I’m telling you if we will hit these missiles, many Lebanese will be killed. Many of them even don’t know that they are neighboring a missile and are totally innocent. You are the secretary-general of the United Nations. What is your advice?”
Ban had no answer.
Amidror believes that there is a “very-high-probability” of another war between Israel and Hezbollah, but that such a conflict is not necessarily inevitable. If the conflict does occur, Amidror assessed that Israel’s aim would be to neutralize Hezbollah’s military capabilities.
The retired general’s assessment of a conflict with Hezbollah was part of a wide-ranging discussion of the challenges Israel is facing in the near future. Amidror characterized Israel as facing one and a half major threats. The half a threat was from Hezbollah. The whole threat is from Hezbollah’s patron, Iran.
Regarding Iran, Amidror is confident that Israel is capable of destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities if necessary. Without giving details, Amidror said, “We know how to do the job in spite of the positions of the S-300,” a Russian anti-aircraft missile system. He said that Israel would attack, if it was the “last day” – but that day has not arrived.
Overall, Amidror’s philosophy is that “peace—or calm, at least—came as a result of Israeli muscle,” Rosen observed. This isn’t just important in terms of deterring its own enemies, but also because Israel has “proved to its former enemies in the Sunni Arab world that it’s powerful enough to fill the vacuum left by America’s exit from the region and to stand up to Iran on the rest of the Middle East’s behalf.”
Israel’s current strategic position in the Middle East leaves Amidror, “very optimistic.”
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