While Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon (Likud) has tried to allay fears claiming digging sounds residents on the northern border have been hearing for years are not Hezbollah constructing terror tunnels, a new video records what clearly appears to be the sound of underground digging.
When asked about the noises earlier this month, Ya’alon claimed “no tunnels have been located on the northern border. Noises that were heard beneath a home turned out to be a neighbor’s horse stomping with his hooves.”
But a new video posted on YouTube Wednesday, said to have been filmed at nighttime in the moshav Shtula right on the border with Lebanon, has many seriously doubting Ya’alon’s claims.
Highlighting fears for many is the fact that the government was unwilling to destroy Hamas’s terror tunnels in Operation Protective Edge despite their existence being known, with the government agreeing to ceasefires with Hamas before the tunnels were lethally unveiled, indicating a willingness to leave them in place.
Tensions with Hezbollah have been raised sharply in recent days, after a top terrorist in the organization was killed in an Israeli airstrike, just days after Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah threatened to conquer the Galilee.
Upper Galilee Regional Council head Giora Zaltz said last September that despite the reports of terror tunnels from Lebanon, “as of today all of the investigations that have been conducted – and many have been conducted – have not found even a single tunnel.”
“I’ll tell you what’s more, here you don’t need a tunnel to cross the border. Twenty-two communities are already on the confrontation line adjacent to the border, so that if someone wanted to do something they wouldn’t need a tunnel,” said Zaltz, in a statement unlikely to reassure many.
IDF sources earlier last September revealed to Arutz Sheva that the army is in fact concerned about the tunnel threat, and is quietly investigating the possibility of Hezbollah terror tunnels.
Many residents of the north have reported hearing the sounds of digging and hammers from underneath their homes, coupled with evidence of active cement mixers and construction trucks carting out earth on the Lebanese side under the cover of greenhouse structures.
