Israel has provided the U.N. and the Lebanese army extensive intelligence proving Hezbollah has dug cross-border attack tunnels from Lebanon into Israel, but they have so far neglected to take action to confront the matter.
The Israel Defense Forces launched Operation Northern Shield on Dec. 4 with the goal of neutralizing the Shiite terrorist group's attack tunnels. The military has not disclosed how many tunnels snake into Israeli territory from Lebanon or how long the operation is going to last.
"The Lebanese military and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon are still not doing anything to seal the tunnel shafts," IDF Spokesperson Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis said.
Manelis said the IDF provided UNIFIL with exact coordinates of where tunnels had been dug from specific homes in Ramyeh, a Lebanese village close to the border.
The IDF began to destroy some of the cross-border tunnels from the Israeli side of the border last week and is expected to neutralize more this week.
One tunnel will be kept intact, allowing ambassadors, journalists and others to get a first-hand look at what a Hezbollah attack tunnel looks like.
IDF officials believe that Hezbollah will not take aggressive action against Israel as long as the operation remains confined to Israeli territory only.
Residents of Zarit, in the Upper Galilee and just meters from Israel's border with Lebanon, say that the IDF activity in the area continues, days after the IDF destroyed a nearby tunnel.
"It felt like an earthquake, and then there was a huge explosion," Zarit resident Liat Cohen told Israel Hayom. "There are still a lot of troops in the area; it feels like a war zone."
