You see, if the ground war had been undertaken a month ago, Hezbullah terrorists wouldn’t be crawling back into their ratholes for the next wave. The IDF can handle the job. It just wasn’t given to them in full.
“The brigade executed an action that they’d been training for a long time: the ability to pass over the ‘combat strip’ and move a large number of forces into the enemy’s tactical homefront, who would work their way from the north to the south,” he explained. “In practice, we executed a deceptive maneuver in order to lure the terrorists to a natural preserve and, simultaneously, we airlifted a battalion into the enemy homefront.”
Hundreds of additional soldiers, including Virov himself, walked for 12 hours, circumventing Beit Lif, in order to join the airlifted forces, resulting in almost a thousand soldiers positioned north of the enemy force.
“We found ourselves in the Hizbullah homefront, in launching areas…We fought for more than three days. We fought through thickets, destroyed launchers and trucks carrying arms, fired at gunmen and killed dozens of terrorists,” Virov recounts.
“At a certain point, we say a 24-head rocket launcher 500 meters from us…driving as if they thought no one could see them. We destroyed the launcher, along with the rocket. The two terrorists inside were killed,” he continued.
The brigade commander explained the logistical difficulty of the operation: “There was no access route and the soldiers were hauling 35-40 kg of equipment, each. Provisions were air dropped and we would send groups of soldiers, with bags, into enemy territory to get water and a little food. The enemy knew that we were there, but didn’t realize the extent of the force or weaponry that we had.”
Hezballah now knows more about Israel’s tactics and can prepare for them next time.