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IDF increases air strikes following Hezbollah attacks on Haifa area
Following Hezbollah’s success at striking the Haifa area on Tuesday, the IDF later Tuesday and early Wednesday significantly increased its pace of airstrikes to try to roll back the groups’ rocket attacks.
The IDF announced on Wednesday that it had upped its airstrikes over the last 24 hours to 185 targets across all of Lebanon.
This was a significant increase compared to days when the strikes were in the dozens or even from Monday when the air force struck around 120 targets, but almost exclusively in southern Lebanon.
IDF strikes in southern Lebanon (Credit: IDF’ Spokesperson’s Unit)
Also, the targets were once again more spread out as opposed to being focused on the south, which had been the trend since the IDF invasion started on September 30. These changes could also mark a shift in strategy as the IDF possibly moves into a third phase of its major moves against Hezbollah, which started in mid-September.
The phases in question
The first phase saw two days of Hezbollah operatives and communications being torn apart by beeper and walkie-walkie explosions. It also included the killing of Ibrahim Aqil and around 20 of his top sub-commanders of the Radwan special forces. On September 23, it included the air force hitting 1,300 targets in only one day. Finally, on September 27, it included the assassination of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah as well as a number of other top Hezbollah officials, like Ali Karaki.
IDF officials have said that the strategy for Phase I was to disable Hezbollah’s capability to harm the Israeli home front in a devastating way as well as to lay the groundwork for a potential invasion if needed.
Phase two saw the invasion of southern Lebanon to take apart Hezbollah’s Radwan potential invasion weapons, tunnels, and positions. The air force, likewise, since September 30, has focused much more on southern Lebanon, especially providing real-time support to maneuvering ground forces facing ambushes from Hezbollah.
Every few days, the IDF sent in an additional division: first Division 98, then Division 36, then Division 91, and on Tuesday, Division 143, with more increases expected. They have increased the pace of destroying Hezbollah infrastructure in certain southern Lebanon villages, such as Mavarchin.
However, in what might be Phase 3, Division 98 is already receiving new maneuvering orders and IDF sources have said that they believe some initial missions of clearing Hezbollah positions will soon be taken care of sufficiently to move on to additional missions.
In turn, the air force may be refocusing on wider rocket threats throughout Lebanon.
If by September 30, it was assumed that Hezbollah’s failure to fire deeper into Israel and cause serious damage had shown they were truly losing that capability, Tuesday’s attacks on the Haifa area may have convinced top defense officials to return to striking beyond southern Lebanon to cause greater damage to those long-range capabilities.
All of this could be a prelude to the IDF shifting its focus from merely clearing southern Lebanon of Hezbollah’s presence to also trying to truly get the longer-range rocket threat under control.
These new efforts come with as the military also faces increased time pressure to succeed in restoring security for 60,000 northern border residents as Lebanon’s mountainous winter and the November 5 US presidential election both bear down on the timing calculus.
Michael Bar Zohar, at 86 one of Israel’s great and most prolific historians, especially regarding security issues, published a book called “Iron Swords, Bleeding Hearts” less than a month ago on the failures leading up to October 7 and the current war.
The book closes just as Hezbollah is considering its response to the IDF’s killing of its military chief Fuad Shukr on July 30, which turned out to be the August 25 IDF rout of Hezbollah’s attempted retaliation, which itself in turn pushed Israel into having the audacity to decapitate Hezbollah starting in mid-September.
Bar Zohar uses essentially all open sources on the most current events, but has a priceless number of anecdotes and unique perspectives from his exclusive coverage of Israeli titans like David Ben Gurion, Shimon Peres, and others as he leads into how Israel and the Middle East got to where they are now.
But the most important aspects of Bar Zohar’s book are forward-looking: How must Israel, and the West for that matter, understand the challenge of fundamentalist Islamist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran?With the anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 invasion passing this past week and the invasion of Lebanon moving forward at full throttle, the most practical lessons from Bar Zohar probably have to do with connecting those two events in terms of understanding how the current war in Lebanon must end.
Extrapolating from Bar Zohar’s narrative, predictions, and views, the war in Lebanon must end with Israeli security being dependent on Jerusalem and its allies being able to enforce its security and not merely on hopes of “converting” Hezbollah into accepting Israel and joining the Western world.
Bar Zohar writes, “I began writing this book on October 8, 2023, after a sleepless night. I had turned off my TV set after watching, on a foreign channel, the horror in the settlements at the Gaza border, and, for a change, the boisterous street protests in favor of Hamas in foreign capitals.”
“I knew that this crucial chapter of history would be distorted and falsified by lies and fake news, as well as emotions, blind fanaticism, insane hatred of some and foolish adoration of others. I felt that my duty was to tell the truth about these apocalyptic events that shook the world. But to tell the truth now, today, not in a year or two or five. Now.” he continues.
Here, Bar Zohar was cognizant that October 7 was not just about killing 1,200 Israelis, taking 250 hostages, and the failures that led to this – but how this event and Israel’s response would reshape the Middle East afterward.
Failures that lead to October 7
Aside from a harrowing account of the numerous political, intelligence, and operational failures leading into October 7 which are meticulously laid out in the first 16 chapters, there are some later chapters which paint some of the broader trends which have developed since November 2023 and still confront Israel now.
His coverage of Israel’s first major assassination in Lebanon on January 2, 2024 – of Hamas deputy chief Salah al-Arouri – is indicative.
Recounting the event, he says, “Sheik Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, took Al Arouri’s assassination very seriously. Only a few days before, he had met with Arouri and advised him to beware, as the Israelis targeted him. For Nasrallah, the location of the hit was symbolic. During the Second Lebanon War, Israeli warplanes had pulverized the Dahia neighborhood, where the headquarters of Hezbollah were located.”
With a bit of unforeseeable irony and almost prophetic foreshadowing for how Nasrallah eventually met his end from an IDF air strike in Dahia on September 27, Bar Zohar continues. “Nasrallah himself had to run for shelter to an underground bunker in Dahia. After the war ended [referring to the 2006 Second Lebanon War], he stayed in his bunker for years, avoiding any public appearances. Even his speeches were broadcast from the bunker. He thought he was safe in Dahia – and here [after Al Arouri was killed], all of a sudden, he found out that Israel could readily come and go as it pleased. If Arouri was not safe there, neither was Nasrallah. The assassination also proved that Israel had very reliable spies in Beirut.”
Bar Zohar recounts how Nasrallah was taken by surprise when the IDF killed Al Arouri as well as a few days later when the IDF killed Wissam Al Tawil, the deputy commander of the elite Radwan unit, with Al Tawil also being the brother of Nasrallah’s third wife, Hadda Al Tawil.
Nasrallah struck back at some IDF bases in the North, but without causing significant damage and in a relatively weak way, with Bar Zohar commenting, “These Hezbollah attacks were very close to acts of war, but did not cross the blurred line between a border conflict and a war…But once again the upshot failed to meet expectations,” for what Hamas had hoped for from Hezbollah in helping them fight Israel.
The bottom line is that, as indicated by these earlier rounds, once Israel switched gears into hitting Nasrallah much more complicated, he was not ready for the IDF’s fury and was taken by surprise – much as he had been by Hamas’s invasion on October 7.
Next, Bar Zohar briefly explores in one of his last chapters the implications of the Iranian attack, the Israeli counterattack, and the help Israel received from Sunni allies to defend itself in April.
He observes, “And yet, the most important result of these tumultuous days was the baptism of fire of the new American-Arab-Israeli coalition that augured a new era in the Middle East. A new era is indeed beginning, bringing tremendous changes to the lives of millions and carrying a faint glimmer of peace. The new coalition, strengthened by new Israeli leaders, may augur the creation of a new Middle East.”
“The coalition that defeated the Iranian juggernaut in the sky may transform into a solid alliance that could reshape the entire region, establish a new administration in Gaza, and bring moderation to these embattled lands. This is the dream for the future,” he continues.
But by the end of the book, Bar Zohar notes that the killing of Shukr, as well as the killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, were “the start of a new stage in the war, with the focus moving from the Gaza strip to the North. That seemed to be the fading away of the Iron Swords and the beginning of a new confrontation between Israel, America, and their allies – and the ‘Axis of Evil’ in the north.
In terms of how the conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran should end, he warns that military force will be continually needed alongside any diplomatic efforts and cautions not to leave too much based on “deals” with such parties.
“One can reason with extremists as long as they understand logic and have a modicum of common sense. Israel could negotiate with the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, and his supporters, as their movement, Fatah, was a nationalist, not a religious one. But when the rival’s ideology is based on religion – no reasonable arguments can influence it,” writes Bar Zohar.
Although Bar Zohar was formerly a Labor party member and Arafat was far from an ideal peace partner, his book’s conclusion is clear that any final security situation with Hezbollah and Iran must be enforceable by the Israeli military.
A diplomatic deal may end the conflict as all conflicts end, but after seeing how Hezbollah abused UN Resolution 1701 for 17 years, Bar Zohar clearly feels that resolving the current conflict with Hezbollah cannot rest merely on an, even strengthened, international peacekeeping force hopefully doing its job.
He finishes with a dark prediction that “The Israel-Hamas confrontation is the first battle of a new World War, a war between the modern world and the ferocious fanatics of radical Islam. A new kind of war. Not the wars to which the world has grown accustomed, fought with armies, tanks, planes, and infantry firing and charging and shouting Hurray – but a war against enemies who aim to destroy the free world from within.”
Special forces killed four terrorists in a vehicle during an operation in Nablus in the West Bank, army radio reported on X/Twitter Wednesday evening.
They were seen armed moments before they were killed, footage published by army radio showed.
A source told Kan that the terrorists killed in Nablus were a squad of terrorists from the Balata Camp that were preparing to carry out an attack against Israelis.4 מחבלים חוסלו ברכב במהלך פעולה של כוחות מיוחדים בשכם, כך הם תועדו רגע לפני שנהרגו pic.twitter.com/mFUGTHFqYg
— הוד בראל Hod Barel (@hod_barel) October 9, 2024
Riots in Nablus
Riots broke out on Wednesday afternoon, during which the IDF killed four terrorists following intelligence provided by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), Maariv reported.
Commander of the Balata Battalion of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade (which is aligned with Fatah) Issam a-Salaj was allegedly eliminated in the operation, Walla noted.
This is a developing story.
Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. Announced on Tuesday that it will be showcasing its latest defense capabilities at the defense AUSA exhibition October 14-16 in Washington D.C., including a new Lite Beam laser-based interception system integrated into the Trophy multitasking defense platform.
While not as much of a watershed moment as when Israel can finally deploy its Iron Beam laser defense system, the Lite Beam is still a powerful example of Israel succeeding in using layers, at least for short-range defense.
Defense sources told the Jerusalem Post that the Lite Beam’s operational capabilities have been proven, though they declined to disclose exactly when and how the IDF has used such capabilities in the field in Gaza or Lebanon.
The implication was that the Lite Beam would be effective against drones and possibly against mortars but would not shoot down most rockets or long-range missiles, which Israel eventually hopes the Iron Beam will do.In general, laser defense technologies are viewed as a major part of future air defense because they would end the arms cost race in which Israel and other wealthy countries constantly waste huge amounts of money to protect themselves from weaker adversaries using low-attack cheap forms of threats.
The sources added that the Lite Beam has hard kill neutralization capabilities which can be integrated on any vehicular platform and operational capabilities, and that it also can be a component of the drone dome which utilizes both soft kill and jamming.
The advantage of Lite Beam
Rafael said that Lite Beam “offers advantages such as engagement at the speed of light, an unlimited magazine, and negligible cost per interception.”
Further, Rafael stated that its “latest modular C-UAS solutions for force protection can operate alongside the Trophy Active Protection System (APS) in a combat formation to enhance ground maneuver capabilities across the battlespace.”
Moreover, it said, “The C-UAS Drone Dome solution, with its laser interception capability, can be integrated on 4×4, 6×6, and 8×8 wheeled and tracked vehicles to support counter-drone missions as well as other force protection missions.”
As part of its display, Rafael will introduce a unique modular Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS) concept, combining advanced detection and interception technologies.
One of the defense systems on this platform is the Lite Beam laser-based interception system, but it also includes “the Samson 30mm Remote Weapon Station (RWS), on a 4-wheeled platform. These solutions provide maneuvering forces with robust force protection and flexibility against a wide range of airborne threats, including UAVs.”
Also, the Trophy’s “cutting-edge technology is operational on over a dozen platforms worldwide, including Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs), Armored Fighting Vehicles (AFVs), and Main Battle Tanks (MBTs). It has consistently demonstrated its adaptability and reliability in complex combat scenarios, providing comprehensive protection for vehicles and crews,” said Rafael.
“This latest presentation at AUSA highlights RAFAEL’s ongoing commitment to delivering advanced battlefield defense solutions. As global threats evolve, we continue to equip armed forces with cutting-edge technologies to ensure their operational superiority in diverse and challenging environments,” said Mr. Tzvi Marmor, EVP & General Manager of the Land & Naval Systems Division.
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