Israel is planning to establish military outposts in southern Lebanon and southwestern Syria as a means of defending Israeli communities from being attacked by Hezbollah or other terror groups, according to a report in Israeli media.
Hallel Bitton Rosen, reporting for Channel 14 (Israel’s equivalent of Fox News), said Thursday:
Israel in a new defense concept in the northern region – 12 outposts will be built along the border with Lebanon, one opposite each community in Israel [on the border].
In addition, 9 outposts will be built in the outer region of Syria, 2 of which will be in the former Syrian Mount Hermon.
Senior Israeli officials tell Channel 14: If [President-elect Donald] Trump doesn’t press otherwise — we’re there to stay.
Israel has slowly withdrawn from towns in southern Lebanon under the terms of a 60-day ceasefire with Hezbollah. The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) are supposed to replace the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in that region. Separately, since the collapse of the Syrian regime, Israel has occupied the strategic peak of Mount Hermon, and areas within or near a former demilitarized zone to the east of the Golan Heights in Syria, deterring attacks by Syrian rebel groups.
It is unclear whether the international community would accept an Israeli presence in these regions. Hezbollah has, in the past, used the IDF presence in southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000 as a pretext for attacking Israel. And the Syrian rebels who have taken over the country have insisted that Israel respect its territorial integrity.
But Israel may not care: there may be no other way to guarantee that terror groups do not use border regions to attack Israeli towns.
On Thursday, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) conducted an airstrike on Hezbollah launchers in Lebanon; the IDF claims it did so only after a request to the LAF, which is responsible for destroying such weapons, was not fulfilled.
There is also a question of whether the outposts would be effective, or whether they would provide attractive targets for terrorists, or invite ambushes as Israeli soldiers patrolled territory between their fortified military positions.
However, in Syria at least, some of the Druze Arab communities near the border have shown interest in a permanent IDF presence, or even in annexation by Israel, saying that they fear the presence of the jihadist Syrian rebels.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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