Ha’aretz interviewed director of Military Intelligence Major General Amos Yadlin. Here are his thoughts on the threats Israel faces:
According to Yadlin, Israel faces five threats: Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The intelligence picture that Israel has about these threats is not homogeneous, he says. On certain fronts the intelligence is good, on others it is very good. In any event, the intelligence picture is significantly better than it was two or three years ago.
One would have to agree with that, knowing Israel destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor disguised as an ordinary building.
Asked whether a war is likely in 2008, he replies, “The assessment of MI is that there is a low probability, even a very low probability, that the enemy will initiate a war against Israel in 2008.” However, he adds, “The MI assessment also states that even though the enemy will not initiate a war, it is preparing for war. It is preparing for war because it is afraid that Israel will attack it. Accordingly, a mistake in judgment is liable to lead to war. The situation is volatile because both sides are preparing for war and are ready for a war, even though they do not want it.”
Oh, that’s cheerful. And Yadlin pulls no punches on what will happen in that war:
We must not put into the same basket the rockets we remember from the Lebanon War, which for the most part covered only the north of the country, and the steep-trajectory munitions, which can reach Gush Dan [Metropolitan Tel Aviv] and even farther south. The steep-trajectory munitions resemble surface-to-surface missiles more than they do rockets. Here the count is completely different. Hezbollah?s steep-trajectory munitions now cover large areas of Israel.
But here’s some good news:
Ahead of a possible future confrontation, Hezbollah is preparing a combined deployment of steep-trajectory weapons that will target the Israeli rear, and at the same time trying to create a ground force that will be able to cope successfully with a ground assault, which Hezbollah perceives as the IDF’s central lesson from the war of 2006.
[…] I will say only that some of the changes Hezbollah is undergoing oblige it to move from the form of a terrorist army to the characteristics of a conventional army. This is the case in its deployment, its weaponry and also in terms of command and control. This transition is not entirely advantageous for Hezbollah. It deprives it of some of the advantages it had as an elusive body that strikes at the civilian population and hides behind the back of the civilian population.”
There is much, much more on all five threats. Read it all.