According to the Alma Research and Education Center, a vast and enormously complex system of tunnels exists under Lebanon, extending for hundreds of kilometers and potentially into Israeli territory.
https://www.jns.org/the-vast-underground-world-of-hezbollah-terror-tunnels/
Tension has spiked across Israel’s northern border over the past week following the alleged killing by Israel of Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri in a suburb of Beirut.
This escalation comes nearly three months into fighting that erupted along the Israel-Lebanon border in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.
“The situation is already essentially war—they [Hezbollah] are killing our soldiers and bombing our houses. The reality is completely untenable for anyone who lives in the north,” said Tal Finkelstein, a resident of the northern city of Kiryat Shmona.
The continued fighting has led the Israeli leadership to call for Hezbollah to withdraw its forces from the northern border. Both Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzl Halevi have said that Israel is willing to use force to push the terror group further north.
These developments have raised questions about Hezbollah’s offensive and defensive capabilities generally, and more specifically regarding the vast terror tunnel network that Hezbollah is believed to have been developing in preparation for a potential war with Israel.
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Operation Northern Shield
The issue of the Hezbollah tunnel network was thrown into the limelight in 2018 when Israel launched “Operation Northern Shield.” Over a period of six weeks, the IDF exposed six tunnels dug from Lebanon into Israel.
According to the IDF, these tunnels were “designed to secretly transport Hezbollah terrorists into areas near Israeli communities in the northern Galilee and to then to attack those communities.” The largest tunnel, originating in the southern Lebanese town of Ramiyah, was 260 feet deep—equivalent to a 22-story building—more than 3,000 feet long and extended nearly 250 feet into Israel. It featured air-conditioning, phone lines, rail tracks and staging grounds for cross-border invasions.
According to Maj. (res.) Tal Beeri, head of research at the Galilee-based Alma Research and Education Center, the discovery of these tunnels overturned the military thinking that the rocky terrain of southern Lebanon would present a major obstacle to the development of a substantial tunnel system by Hezbollah.
