The IDF on Tuesday attacked Hezbollah Radwan training camps around 100 km. deep into Lebanon in the Bekaa Valley, showing that it is now ready to attack the group anywhere in Lebanon, even if high-quality weapons are not in play.
After the November 27, 2024, ceasefire with Hezbollah, Israel and the IDF primarily relegated any attacks to keeping Hezbollah forces out of southern Lebanon – enforcing the letter of the law of the ceasefire deal.
However, as weeks and months passed since the ceasefire, Israel started to occasionally target specific Hezbollah sites in Beirut or deeper into the country, where the Lebanese terror group was starting to try to restore or reposition its remaining high-quality missiles and rockets.
Tuesday’s attack was unusual because it did not involve southern Lebanon and did not involve any high-quality weapons.
Rather, the IDF said it had attacked Hezbollah's Radwan special forces’ training camps and their storage centers for ammunition.
The IDF noted that the threat was not theoretical
Located over 100 km. away, these camps and their regular ammunition present no immediate or even medium-term threat to Israel, given that they would need to try to return to southern Lebanon, which Hezbollah has failed to do to date, before they could even try to conceive of invading Israel.
Despite these facts, the IDF stated that the sole reason for the existence of these camps was to train for invading Israel at some point, and as such, it was in Israel’s interest to disrupt the training.
Also, the IDF noted that the threat was not theoretical, as Radwan is the special forces whose primary goal for years had been to invade the Galilee and conquer portions of it, in a nightmare scenario that could have been worse than Hamas’s October 7 invasion.
Next, the IDF recalled that in September 2024, it had managed to kill almost all of Radwan’s senior commanders, but that IDF intelligence had detected attempts by Radwan to remake itself in these Bekaa Valley camps.
Likewise, Defense Minister Israel Katz stated that Israel will strike any attempt by Radwan or other Hezbollah forces to try to rebuild capabilities for invading the Jewish state.
All of this takes place as Hezbollah is at a low point in its power militarily and politically in Lebanon versus the other ethnic groups in the country, which also have stakes in aspects of state power.
Israel’s periodically hitting its capabilities and mid-level commanders from the air, its loss at least for now of Iranian financial support due to Tehran’s need to recover from its own war with Israel, and the loss of the alliance with the Assad regime in Syria, have left Hezbollah hounded on several fronts simultaneously, and other Lebanese groups vying to reduce its control over the state.