Israel Massing Military on Lebanon Border

Posted on July 21, 2006

I’m not sure how big this war is going to get, but the rumors don’t sound too good. I’ve been hearing things like connections between Iran and North Korea as weapon providers. I’ve even heard rumors of China. Now it looks like things are about to heat up significantly.

Israel massed tanks and troops on the border, called up reserves and warned civilians to flee Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon as it prepared Friday for a likely ground invasion to set up a deep buffer zone.

Israeli forces would conduct ground operations as needed in Lebanon, but they would be “limited,” Israeli army chief of staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz said. He also said nearly 100 Hezbollah guerrillas have been killed in the offensive in Lebanon.

“We will fight terror wherever it is because if we do not fight it, it will fight us. If we don’t reach it, it will reach us,” Halutz said at a news conference in Tel Aviv. “We will also conduct limited ground operations as much as needed in order to harm the terror that harms us.”

Israeli will allow aid supplies into Lebanon, an envoy said, a day after the United Nations warned of a growing humanitarian crisis after 10 days of the heaviest bombardment of the country in 24 years.

Hezbollah militants fired 11 rockets at Israel’s port city of Haifa, wounding five people. Israeli warplanes pounded Lebanon’s main road link to Syria, collapsing part of Lebanon’s longest bridge. A U.N.-run observation post near the border was hit, but no one was hurt.

Ships lined up at Beirut’s port as a massive evacuation of Americans and other foreigners picked up speed. U.S. officials said more than 8,000 of the roughly 25,000 Americans in Lebanon will be evacuated by the weekend.

As sunset approached, lines of tanks, troops, armored personnel carriers and bulldozers were parked on a two-lane highway in northern Israel _ close enough for some soldiers to see Lebanese villages and homes.

A senior Israeli military official said it intends to destroy Hezbollah’s tunnels, hideouts, weapons caches and other assets during its expected land incursions into southern Lebanon, not create a buffer zone as it did during its 1982-2000 occupation.

The goal is to weaken Hezbollah so that the Lebanese army can move into areas previously controlled by the guerrillas, possibly with the aid of an increased international peacekeeping force, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the topic dealt with sensitive military matters.

Bryan at Hot Air:

So how big is this “mass” of troops that will conduct “limited” operations in southern Lebanon? According to FNC’s Jennifer Griffin, whom I just saw reporting from the border a few minutes ago, about 1,000 troops including about 30 tanks. To put that into some perspective, Israel has about 125,000 troops on active duty and another 600,000 in reserves, and over 600 tanks. Whatever you want to call the force that’s about to go into Lebanon (and probably come right back out once it has achieved some limited objective), it’s not a “mass.” It’s a unit or a brigade.

I think Israel’s intent here is to be more surgical than what the media is portraying. However, I also think this is only the beginning of what will escalate into a major war. Why we are trying to bring about a ceasefire from Israel who are set to destroy these terror organizations that the world is at war with is beyond me. I really don’t understand why a scheduled pull out of Iraq is a bad thing, but is supposedly a good thing when applied to Israel here.