On the night of September 19, without waiting for threat materializing by Lebanon’s Hezbollah to avenge terrorist attacks committed via individual means of communication, Israel launched massive strikes against facilities in southern Lebanon — the most powerful over the last few years. Along with that, the Jewish state’s Air Force command completed deploying units of the 92nd mechanized brigade withdrawn from the Palestinian Gaza Strip to their country’s north.
The brigade is deemed as part of Israeli army’s elite to comprise not only tank and mechanized units, but also numerous special operations assets of various composition and types.
The Israeli aircraft had been delivering missile and bomb attacks for seven successive hours, the Arab Asharq Al-Awsat outlet reports, on the Hezbollah-controlled territory of southern Lebanon outside the settlements of Khiam, Shekhin, A-Taiba, Bleida, Mis al-Jabal, Kfar Kila and Eitaron. Air raids on these and other areas were accompanied by simultaneous artillery fire. Israeli batteries fired flame projectiles at the border villages of Naqoura and Alma Al-Shaab, entailing numerous fires in the Lebanese territory and a smoke screen over a vast area, which made it difficult to control developments at the Lebanese-Israeli border.
Moreover, the period of raids and artillery shelling also engaged separate gun-fights between units of the Israeli army and Hezbollah’s border outposts.
One may certainly assume that manifestations of Israeli army’s activity is a backlash for the Lebanese Shiites’ attack on a communication and control point in the Northern Galilee, which killed 37 Israeli officers and one general, by various estimates.
However, judging by the special IT-operation carried out the day before and the massive use of aviation and artillery, the Jewish command conducted contact reconnaissance right before its potential military invasion of Lebanon. The blowup of individual means of communication was not only meant to physically annihilate the Shiite organization’s mid-ranking military leaders, but to "de-energize" their habitual communication means. Restoring secure channels is a time-intensive thing, so the grouping will be forced to use consumer equipment that is not protected from interception by Israeli technical aids.
On we go. The bombing and shelling were aimed to expose the Hezbollah’s defense system and goad its military leadership into ordering the detachments to abide by the combat schedule. That is deploying personnel to pre-arranged firing sites, as confirmed by the Israelis’ subsequent immediate aerial reconnaissance using combat aircraft and UAVs over the cities of Sur (Tyre), Saida (Sidon), Nabatieh, and southeastern pats of Lebanon.
And finally, the Israelis launched no attacks on Hezbollah military command’s intelligence headquarters or control centers in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Beqaa Valley, and northern Lebanon so as to locate back-up communications and control facilities. During offensive reconnaissance, a good part of those were used to obtain up-to-date information or transmit instructions.
It follows from the foregoing that the Israeli military and political leadership may have decided to undertake a military operation in southern Lebanon to eliminate any armed presence of Hezbollah.
