Amid the threat from Hezbollah’s drone, which IDF soldiers and northern residents continue to face daily, former Menashe Brigade commander Col. (res.) Oren Zini warned Thursday morning in an interview with the ynet studio that the danger could also reach central Israel.
Asked whether the first-person-view (FPV) drone threat could one day reach places such as the central city of Kfar Saba, he replied: “Absolutely. There is no question at all.”
“Anyone who is skeptical about this understands nothing about the Middle East, and therefore there is one solution: presence — our forces inside the territory. Dismantling laboratories, capturing and arresting wanted suspects who are only talking about and planning to create such capabilities. And in Gaza and Lebanon, friends, there is no choice. We will not be able to create a bypass around Jericho. We must enter and defeat the enemy in both sectors.”
“The situation is not simple,” he said of the sirens in the north and the continued fighting in Lebanon. “This truly poses a real challenge to our forces. These explosives-laden drones — they appear out of nowhere, they surprise the forces. Let’s trust the Jewish mind, which will very quickly know how to provide a response to this too, but unfortunately, at this stage, the prices are very heavy. We have lost quite a few soldiers, including the dear soldier last night in the Givati Brigade. Very heavy prices. I believe we will soon provide a solution to this as well.”
“We have a lot of experience with this. We always said that what happens in Lebanon — about a year, a year and a half later — becomes what is called the ‘Lebanonization of Gaza.’ As someone who fought all his years in the Strip and saw how the explosive devices from the north reached Gaza, I have no doubt this will also reach Gaza and Judea and Samaria. There is a tangible and real danger here, and therefore our best minds will have to provide a response to it. That same response will also be used in the other sectors,” he said.
Zini said that “the other side has one clear goal: to harm our forces and the residents of the north and the Gaza border area as much as possible. We must take decisions into our own hands, stop being dependent on other factors, and I am not minimizing the American value and the things it has given us. But everything connected to our borders — only we must complete the mission. Until we take the full center of gravity and force, carry out attacks and defeat the enemy there, we will experience new incidents again and again, as we are seeing.”
“The immediate threat is in the north,” he concluded. “We see it every day with the FPV drones, and when they don’t hit our forces, they will hit our communities. The second nearby threat is, of course, in the Strip, where they are not laying down their weapons. They continue to build up their strength. But without a doubt, the existential threat is Iran. That is why I am very concerned about the agreements being discussed right now. There must be no nuclear weapons or enriched uranium in that country. Any reasonable person must understand that.”
On Thursday morning, the IDF announced that Sgt. Rotem Yanai, a welfare affairs noncommissioned officer in the Rotem Battalion of the Givati Brigade, was killed Wednesday by an FPV drone strike on the northern border, inside Israeli territory. Yanai, who lived in Givat Ada, is the 12th soldier killed since te so-called cease-fire in southern Lebanon, and the 24th fallen soldier since Operation Roaring Lion began.
Alongside northern residents, soldiers in Lebanon are also operating under danger, even without actively fighting. Hezbollah is doing everything it can to force the IDF out of the villages and the yellow line, and is therefore using the drone fire as a form of attrition. FPV drone operators are gradually honing their tactics and have moved to using swarms of drones and drones that operate at night with thermal equipment.
The terrorist organization launches between 10 and 15 explosives-laden drones a day — most of them at IDF forces in Lebanon and a small portion toward communities along the confrontation line. Most of the drones are intercepted, but one a day is enough to cause significant harm. The air force did strike Tyre in southern Lebanon, but that still does not amount to hitting Hezbollah’s major centers of gravity.