The 2019 Israel Defense Prize will be awarded to the intelligence and engineering teams that uncovered and neutralized a grid of Hezbollah tunnels in northern Israel, the Defense Ministry announced Monday.
The decision was made by a special ministerial committee and approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is also the acting defense minister.
This award is the defense establishment's highest honor. Created in 1958, it recognizes projects and activities that have made significant operational and technological contributions to national security and the defense of the State of Israel.
The four-year intelligence-technological-operational effort culminated in Operation Northern Shield in December 2018, during which six terror tunnels dug by the Shiite terrorist group under the Israel-Lebanon security fence were destroyed.
During the course of the operation, Military Intelligence revealed that Hezbollah had been secretly working on its tunnel project since the 2006 Second Lebanon War, investing tens of millions of dollars in an effort to exact a heavy price from Israel in any future war.
The ambitious project was kept secret even within Hezbollah; only a handful of senior officials were involved in the scheme, which enjoyed the support of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
The counter-tunnel operation is one of four projects that was awarded the Israel Defense Prize. The Mossad intelligence agency team that broke into the Iranian nuclear archive in July and successfully transferred the information to Israel was also honored, as were two other teams, whose work is highly classified.
