IDF chief tells his forces to organize for floor invasion of Lebanon

Israel‘s army chief has told his forces to prepare for a ground invasion of Lebanon as the Middle East spirals towards a seemingly inevitable wider war.  

Herzi Halevi told soldiers during a drill near the Lebanese border: ‘We are attacking all day, both to prepare the ground for the possibility of your entry [into Lebanon], but also to continue striking Hezbollah.’

‘Hezbollah today expanded its [range] of fire. Later today, it will receive a very strong response,’ he added.

Hezbollah said it had targeted Israel’s Mossad spy agency on Tel Aviv’s outskirts in the morning – the first time it has fired a ballistic missile in almost a year of cross-border clashes sparked by the Gaza war.

In response, Israel said it hit 60 Hezbollah intelligence sites, among hundreds of the group’s targets struck across Lebanon.

Lebanon’s health minister said Wednesday’s strikes killed 51 people and injured 223, including in mountainous areas outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds.

Meanwhile, the US and France are desperate working on ceasefire proposals to resolve the escalating fighting in Lebanon, according to three Israeli sources, who added that no significant progress has been made so far.

The American proposal includes a truce in the north to allow for a diplomatic solution, one of the officials says.

It comes as Britons trapped in Lebanon have claimed they are unable to leave even as Sir Keir Starmer urged UK residents to flee the country yesterday amid fears of an impending ground war. 

Britain’s Ministry of Defence is ramping up contingency plans for a desperate evacuation of UK citizens from Lebanon, with a 700-strong force of Royal Marine commandos, sailors and combat ­engineers being rushed to the region.

Such plans would also see warships and RAF jets already stationed in Cyprus tasked with facilitating the rescue mission, with thousands of Brits still stuck in the country. 

But several Britons took to social media in recent days to declare they or members of their family have not received any response from the British consulate as flights out of Beirut are cancelled amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes. 

‘How am I supposed to leave when every flight is cancelled,’ Stuart Brookes asked.

Meanwhile, Amanda Bonner said her daughter and two kids are trapped in Lebanon because the youngest child, aged just six months, does not have a passport and the family cannot get a response from the British Embassy.

Israel’s round-the-clock strikes have already killed at least 560 people and wounded more than 1,800 since Monday morning.

Families have fled southern Lebanon, flocking to Beirut and the coastal city of Sidon, sleeping in schools turned into shelters, as well as in cars, parks and along the beach.

The MoD’s rescue mission template, known in military circles as ‘Operation Meteoric‘, could see commandos making beach landings in Lebanon with UK citizens escorted on to a flotilla of military vessels.

Amphibious troops would spearhead the rescue bid while the RAF, flying from the UK’s airbase on Cyprus, would provide ‘top cover’.

Royal Navy ships RFA Mounts Bay and HMS Duncan have been in the eastern Mediterranean region to support allies all summer and would also be tasked with supporting evacuation efforts. 

The Royal Air Force have aircraft and transport helicopters on standby to provide support if necessary, and the Foreign Office said Border Force and FCDO officials would be on hand to support military units. 

The operation would be ‘green-lit’ should routes out of the war-torn country, such as international air corridors, be closed down.

This prospect appears increasingly likely after commercial carriers, including British Airways, were already cancelling flights to and from the region as the Prime Minister issued his warning. 

Other countries, including Egypt, began restricting passage to and from Lebanon on Monday.

Maher Ali, who is Palestinian with British parents and who has lived in London for 19 years, told Sky he was visiting family in Lebanon when the Israeli strikes began. 

He said he had struggled to get a flight back to the UK, where his daughters live in London.

‘I’m travelling because I have to but all my family they’re still there in [the] south so it’s very sad and very… there’s nothing we can do actually.’

Britain’s Defence Secretary John Healey said last night: ‘Events in the past hours and days have demonstrated how volatile this situation is which is why our message is clear – British nationals should leave now. 

‘We continue to urge all sides to step back from conflict to prevent further tragic loss of life.

‘Government is ensuring all preparations are in place to support British nationals should the situation deteriorate.’

The Foreign Office echoed the warnings to leave Lebanon ‘immediately’ in a statement shared late Tuesday, continuing to advise against all travel to Lebanon ‘as the situation continues to deteriorate rapidly’ with ‘devastating consequences’.

Thousands of Lebanese citizens have already fled across the border to Syria since the Israeli bombardment began in earnest on Monday, a United Nations refugee agency official said this morning.

Rula Amin, Middle East and North Africa spokesperson for the agency known as UNHCR, said that families were ‘arriving in buses and cars, but also travelling by foot.’

‘Crowds of people – many of whom are women, young children and even infants – continue to await processing for entry,’ she said. ‘Many will have to spend the night outdoors waiting their turn.’

Amin said that UNHCR teams, along with the Syrian Red Crescent, were providing water, mattresses, blankets and food. She noted that the team has ‘also seen people, including children, bearing injuries suffered from the recent attacks on Lebanon.’

Israel this morning continued its campaign of near-round-the-clock strikes on Hezbollah targets across southern and eastern Lebanon, which have killed 569 people and wounded more than 1,800 since Monday, according to Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the attacks had weakened Hezbollah and would continue. 

Hezbollah ‘has suffered a sequence of blows to its command and control, its fighters, and the means to fight. These are all severe blows,’ he told Israeli troops.

But now fears are growing that the IDF could launch an armed incursion across the border in an attempt to create a ‘buffer zone’ by forcing Hezbollah fighters further north of the border.

Israel last week declared that securing the northern territories so displaced Israelis can return to their homes became a formal goal of its war effort, but military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari has refused to give a timeline for the ongoing operation.

Miri Eisen, a senior fellow at Israel’s International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Reichman University and former IDF Colonel, said a limited ground incursion could be ordered to ensure Hezbollah can not carry out anything similar to Hamas’s October 7 attack.

‘I do think that there’s the possibility of a ground incursion because in the end we need to move the Hezbollah forces (away from the border),’ she said.

The mouth of the Litani River, often used as a rough marker to illustrate a theoretical buffer zone, is 18 miles from the border, but in some places comes within two miles of Israeli-controlled territory.

Major Moshiko Giat, an IDF special forces soldier with combat experience in Israel’s 2006 war with Lebanon, told the Telegraph he believes such a buffer zone would be roughly six to 12 miles deep.

But even a limited operation such as this would constitute a major military undertaking – and carries significant risks.

Drawing from the strategy used in previous conflicts, such an operation would likely involve several IDF divisions, with estimates suggesting around 10,000 to 30,000 troops would be needed to clear the area and establish a clear buffer zone.

Hezbollah’s fighting force, which measures between 25,000 and 50,000 according to various Israeli and US estimates, has honed its tactics through decades of conflict – including their successful resistance against Israeli forces during the 2006 war in which Major Giat fought.

Hezbollah boasts a range of anti-tank and anti-air systems, dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles, and its fighters are adept at guerrilla warfare, intimately familiar with the terrain, and would enjoy the advantage of highly fortified positions.

Amal Saad, a Lebanese researcher on Hezbollah who is based at Cardiff University, said of the group: ‘It is extremely capable – and I would say more effective than Israel – when it comes to ground war, underground offensive, and we’ve seen this historically, particularly in 2006,’ she said.

Founder of the Israel Defence and Security Forum, former IDF Brigadier General Amir Avivi, insisted to the Telegraph that such an operation would be more than manageable, suggesting it would take ‘a few weeks’ to clear the area south of the Litani river of Hezbollah forces.

‘Lebanon is not as densely populated as Gaza, and the towns and villages in southern Lebanon are pretty empty. This is not going to be as complicated as what we saw in Gaza.

‘I think it can take a few weeks because it’s going to be very, very intensive. And also there will be huge pressure inside Lebanon on Hezbollah to stop… I would assume that the war is not going to be long.’

But Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said last week a ground incursion would turn southern Lebanon into a death trap for Israeli fighters, adding that his troops could fight Israeli forces in southern Lebanon and fire rockets at northern Israel at the same time.

In that scenario, Israel’s top brass will feel they have no choice but to launch a full-on invasion of Lebanon.

For this reason, the International Crisis Group think tank said in a report released on Monday that the current state of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict ‘poses grave dangers’. 

‘The point may be approaching at which Hezbollah decides that only a massive response can stop Israel from carrying out more attacks that impair it further,’ it said.

‘It might also decide that it needs to hit back hard as long as it believes it can still manage the fallout of severe retaliation that would disable the group’s command-and-control capabilities.’

A full-scale Israeli invasion of Lebanon, in which mass bombing campaigns clear the way for IDF troops to march on Beirut, would undoubtedly devastate Lebanon’s civilian population and infrastructure and would almost certainly precipitate considerable casualties on both sides. 

In 1982 – the last time Israeli forces forced a path through Lebanon and besieged Beirut to oust the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) – some 15,000 to 20,000 people, many of whom were civilians, were killed. 

UN agencies estimate an ‘uncontrolled conflict’ between Israel and Hezbollah today would displace up to one million people – almost a fifth of Lebanon’s population – and the country is already reliant on meagre stockpiles of food and fuel. 

Such a conflict may also drag in Hezbollah’s chief backer and regional power Iran, the consequences of which hardly bear thinking about.