They extend for hundreds of kilometers and some of them reach Israel.. What are the tunnels that Hezbollah's system includes?

At dawn on Tuesday, October 1, 2024, the Israeli occupation army began a ground attack on areas in southern Lebanon as part of its broad escalation steps aimed at eliminating Hezbollah’s infrastructure and military arsenal.

The occupation army has been seeking to destroy Hezbollah's military capabilities and infrastructure since military operations between the occupation and the party escalated one day after the start of the Gaza war on October 7, 2023.

Several reports have highlighted the large military arsenal that Hezbollah possesses in confronting the Israeli occupation army, which includes hundreds of thousands of rockets and missiles, in addition to a large network of tunnels that extend underground, some of which are 45 kilometers long.

Although little is known about Hezbollah's tunnel network, Israeli reports have described it as Hezbollah's most dangerous weapon, which is difficult to destroy, according to the Hebrew website Globes.

Yesterday, Monday, the American newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, revealed that special forces from the Israeli occupation army stormed a number of Hezbollah tunnels along the Lebanese border, in preparation for the expected ground operation.

The occupation army broadcast today, Tuesday, footage that it said showed Israeli army forces entering Hezbollah tunnels on the Lebanese border. It also claimed that it had found a weapons cache in a room inside the tunnel, during previous operations by its forces.

What tunnels does Hezbollah's system include?

The French newspaper Liberation revealed in an investigation that Hezbollah possesses a secret tunnel network that is even more advanced than that of Hamas in Gaza.

The newspaper said that Hezbollah has tunnels that are hundreds of kilometers long and have branches that reach Israel. The party has established a defense plan with dozens of operations centers equipped with local underground networks, linking Beirut, the Bekaa and southern Lebanon.

After the Second Lebanon War in 2006, Hezbollah, with the help of North Korea and Iran, established a project to create a network of regional tunnels in Lebanon, a network much larger than Hamas’s, according to the Israeli Alma Research Center.

The ALMA Research Center also indicated in a report published in June 2023 that there are “explosive tunnels” dug under strategic points that are closed and left without any activity, and they are filled with explosives that can be ignited at the right moment to cause an earthquake, landslides, and a flood of earth and rocks.

When did the tunnel construction start?

According to an investigation by Libération newspaper, since the 1960s, and perhaps even before that, Palestinians who had taken refuge in Lebanon and who were carrying out occasional rocket attacks and incursions into northern Israel, began digging underground trenches.

Hezbollah then took over the task. But because of the rocky terrain, the rocks had to be excavated manually with jackhammers or less noisy hydraulic machines, explained General Olivier Bassot, a military researcher and former head of liaison for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.

It is estimated that each worker can dig an average of about fifteen meters per month. But there is no room to dig in the sand and lay concrete as Hamas later did to create the “Gaza Metro,” according to military expert Basot.

According to a Reuters report, Israel has already struggled to uproot Hamas leaders and their tunnel-based fighting units in Gaza.

“This is one of the biggest challenges we face in Gaza, and it is certainly something we could face in Lebanon,” said Carmit Valensi, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, a think tank.

Unlike Gaza, where most tunnels are dug by hand in sandy soil, the tunnels in Lebanon are dug deep into the rocks of the mountains, said Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King’s College London. “These tunnels are much harder to access than the ones in Gaza, and much harder to destroy,” he said.

Hezbollah had previously revealed in a video clip titled “Our Mountains Are Our Treasures” part of its military arsenal. The clip showed a missile launch facility called “Imad 4,” which includes a missile launcher and military equipment. This facility was built in huge underground tunnels.

Military analyst Hisham Jaber, a retired Lebanese general, said the Imad 4 facility is likely one of dozens, noting that "Lebanon's mountains and hills in the south are ideal for digging protected facilities because they are in the heart of the mountain," according to what was reported by Agence France-Presse.

"Warplanes cannot reach these facilities," Jaber said, and fighters could remain inside the well-equipped tunnels for months, adding that Israel could "continue to destroy Lebanon for months without ever reaching" the hideouts.