WarSclerotic

Recently retired IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot said Monday that Israel came close to all-out conflict with Hezbollah during his tenure.

Speaking at a security conference in Netanya, Eisenkot said tensions with the Iran-backed terror group that controls much of Lebanon almost erupted into a hot war on more than one occasion.

“There were not a few instances and days where the distance between those events and escalation to the point of war or battle was a hair’s breadth,” Eisenkot was quoted saying by Hebrew-language media.

Israel last fought a war with Hezbollah in 2006, but tensions along the northern border have remained high. Israel has for years carried out airstrikes in Syria to prevent weapons transfers to the Iran-backed terror group. The end of Eisenkot’s four-year tenure was marked by an Israeli operation to destroy a network of tunnels under the Lebanese border Israel says were dug by Hezbollah for a future attack. There were several occasions in which Israeli soldiers worked mere meters from Hezbollah operatives across the border.

“The Hezbollah threat is a serious threat,” Eisenkot told the conference. “It is a strong organization that has gained experience in running large operations and wants to prepare an attack plan to conquer the Galilee and bring 5,000 fighters underground” into Israel.

The threat of war with Hezbollah had increased during the last three years, he said.

Israeli troops in newly created Gates of Fire Battalion simulate war with Hezbollah terrorist group in northern Israel in December 2018. (Israel Defense Forces)

The retired general said the Hezbollah tunnel threat was identified years ago and acted on last December, when Israel launched Operation Northern Shield to find and destroy Hezbollah cross-border attack tunnels.

Hezbollah has denied that the tunnels were part of a new attack plan, or that Israel’s destruction of them was a major blow to the group’s operations.

“The uncovering of the tunnels does not affect by 10 percent our plans to take over the Galilee. If we decide to do it — even if they’ve destroyed the tunnels — can’t we rebuild them,”  Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah claimed in January.

He also suggested there may be attack tunnels on the Israeli-Lebanese border that Israel has not yet discovered.

During his term as army chief, which began in February 2015, Eisenkot said, “the crowning glory of security activity was the thwarting of the Iranian nuclear program.” He did not elaborate. The deal between Iran and world powers to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions was signed half a year into his stint as chief of staff.

However, he warned, there was no disputing the Iranian desire to achieve nuclear capability in the future.

Eisenkot also warned that conventional warfare remains a threat to Israel and despite their disintegration during the civil war, the Syrian armed forces were expected to recover.

“There is no doubt that within three to five years we will see an improvement in the Syrian army, which has already begun a rehabilitation process and which is a threat that will continue to occupy the IDF,” Eisenkot said.

Israeli soldiers show UNIFIL commander Maj. Gen. Stefano Del Col a Hezbollah tunnel that penetrated Israeli territory from southern Lebanon, on December 6, 2018. (Israel Defense Forces)

Eisenkot asked to shorten his year-long end-of-service paid leave and end it this month, raising speculation he seeks to make himself eligible to run for political office sooner than expected.

The former top soldier left active service as chief of staff on January 15 and was to begin a year of paid leave until January 2020, but instead will be free of the army by April.

Senior military officials are required to wait a three-year cooling-off period before they are allowed to run for office.

Eizenkot has denied political ambitions and said the reason for the move was to make it easier for him to the join the US-based Washington Institute for Near East Policy as a fellow later this year.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The police chief of the Dutch city of Utrecht said Monday evening that the suspect in a deadly tram shooting earlier in the day has been detained following a manhunt.

At the end of a news conference, Utrecht police chief Rob van Bree told reporters: “I just heard that the suspect we were hunting has been arrested.”

Further details were not immediately available.

The gunman, identified as 37-year-old Turkish-born Gokmen Tanis, killed three people and wounded five on an Utrecht tram on Monday morning, in what the city’s mayor said appeared to be a terror attack, touching off a manhunt that saw heavily armed officers with dogs zero in on an apartment building nearby.

Authorities immediately raised the terror alert for the area to the highest level, and Dutch military police tightened security at airports and key buildings in the country.

Dutch counter-terrorism police install a camera on a sniffer dog as they prepare to enter a house after a shooting incident in Utrecht, Netherlands, on March 18, 2019. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

A few hours after the shooting, Utrecht police released a photo of Tanis and said he was “associated with the incident.” The photo showed a bearded man aboard a tram in a blue hooded top.

Mehmet Tanis, the suspect’s father who lives in Turkey’s central Kayseri province, told the private Demiroren news agency that he had not spoken to his son in 11 years. “If he did it, he should pay the penalty,” the father was quoted as saying.

Separately, Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency said the suspect’s relatives believed he had shot at someone close to the family due to “family issues.”

The attack came three days after 50 people were killed when an immigrant-hating white supremacist opened fire at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, during Friday prayers. There was no immediate indication of any link between the two events.

Utrecht Mayor Jan van Zanen said three people were killed, and police initially put the number of wounded at five.

Rescue workers install a screen on the spot where a body was covered with a white blanket following a deadly shooting in Utrecht, Netherlands, on March 18, 2019. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

“We cannot exclude, even stronger, we assume a terror motive. Likely there is one attacker, but there could be more,” van Zanen said.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that “a terror motive is not excluded” and that the attack was met throughout the country with “a mix of disbelief and disgust.”

“If it is a terror attack, then we have only one answer: our nation, democracy, must be stronger than fanaticism and violence,” he added.

The shooting took place at a busy intersection in a residential neighborhood. Police erected a white tent over an area where a body appeared to be lying next to the tram.

Anti-terror officers gathered in front of an apartment building close to the scene. A dog wearing a vest with a camera mounted on it was also seen outside the building. It is not immediately clear on Monday evening if the arrest took place at the building initially targeted by police.

Police forces at 24 Oktoberplace in Utrecht, on March 18, 2019, after a deadly shooting at the site. (Robin van Lonkhuijsen/ANP/AFP)

The Netherlands’ anti-terror coordinator, Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, raised the threat alert to its highest level, 5, around Utrecht, a city of nearly 350,000.

Political parties halted campaigning ahead of provincial elections scheduled for Wednesday that will also determine the makeup of Parliament’s upper house.

In neighboring Germany, police said they stepped up surveillance of the Dutch border, watching not only major highways but also minor crossings and train routes.

German authorities said they were initially told to look out for a red Renault Clio compact car, but were later informed it had been found abandoned in Utrecht.

Doctors reported a marked improvement Tuesday morning in the medical condition of an IDF soldier wounded in a West Bank terror attack earlier in the week.

Alexander Dvorsky, who was shot on Sunday, was fully conscious, breathing on his own and able to talk with medical staff at Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tkiva, the hospital said.

Meanwhile, Israeli security forces continued their hunt for the suspected terrorist, identified as Omar Abu Laila, 18.

Overnight, forces combed the suspect’s home village of Zawiya near the West Bank city of Ariel, where the attack took place.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on March 18, 2019 visits the site the day after a deadly terror attack near Ariel, in the West Bank. (Marc Israel Sellem/POOL/FLASH90)

Searches continued in surrounding villages, but efforts were shifting to intelligence gathering, with security forces working on the theory that Abu Laila has reached a secure hideout, Israel Radio reported.

Despite suspected of having been shot during the incident, Abu Laila is considered armed and dangerous and in possession of a stolen IDF assault rifle.

According to Israeli authorities, after fatally stabbing Sgt. Gal Keidan at the Ariel junction, Abu Laila grabbed the soldier’s gun and opened fire at passing vehicles, hitting Rabbi Achiad Ettinger, before stealing a vehicle and fleeing the scene. The terrorist then drove to the nearby Gitai junction, where he opened fire again, wounding Dvorsky.

Ettinger succumbed to his injuries Monday morning.

It is still unknown if the terrorist acted alone before and during the attack. Because he appeared to know what he was doing with the weapon, he might have had military training, defense officials said.

Palestinian supporters of Hamas pass out sweets in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah on March 17, 2019, following the terrorist attack where a Palestinian killed at least two people near Ariel, in the West Bank. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

The Shin Bet security service is interrogating Abu Laila’s family and other suspects, and officials estimated that he is receiving assistance and hiding out in one of the villages in the area.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday toured the scene of the attack and said that “the murderers will not uproot us from here.”

“The IDF, Shin Bet and the security forces are in close pursuit of him, we know where he lives and we have located his family, I gave instructions to start demolishing his house and the preparations have already begun,” he said.

Also on Monday, over 1,000 Israelis gathered in the central West Bank settlement of Eli for Ettinger’s funeral, hours after he succumbed to the wounds he sustained in the attack.

Relatives told reporters Sunday that Ettinger had turned his car around after being shot and managed to fire four bullets in the direction of the Palestinian terrorist, causing him to flee the scene rather than target others. The IDF has been unable to corroborate the account of the incident, which was not picked up by security cameras.

Staff Sgt. Kaidan, 19, of Beersheba, who was also killed in the attack, was buried Monday in the military cemetery in the city. He was a third son of parents who immigrated to Israel from the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Seven family members said that he was “a gifted student and musician and a great loss to family and friends.” He left behind two brothers and two parents.