Brigadier General Amir Avivi (Res.) warned Breitbart News in early September that Israel would likely go to war in Lebanon against the Iranian-backed terror group Hezbollah before the U.S. elections in November.
Avivi, who leads a conservative think tank, the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF), told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview for Breitbart News Sunday on SiriusXM Patriot 125 on September 5 (aired September 8) that “war is imminent.”
Breitbart · Amir Avivi – September 8, 2024Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, began launching rockets, missiles, and drones against Israel in October after Hamas, another Iran-backed group, launched its terror attack on October 7, killing 1,200 Israelis.
To date, Hezbollah has fired over 8,000 projectiles at Israel, killing nearly 50 people, both civilian and military, and wounding nearly 300.
Under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, Hezbollah is not allowed to be near the Israeli border, and must be disarmed, but the resolution is not being enforced. As a consequence, following the first Hezbollah attacks in October, Israel had to evacuate 60,500 civilians from 74 towns, both Arab and Jewish, and move them into hotels.
Israel has warned repeatedly that it will launch a full-scale war against Hezbollah, and hold Lebanon responsible for the terror group’s actions, if it does not stop.
The Biden administration has tried to forge a deal in which Hezbollah will stop firing at Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from strategic military positions on the Israeli side of the border, including Har Dov, an important observation point on Mount Hermon that towers over northern Israel. Israel has refused, seeing such a deal as an effective surrender of Israeli sovereignty to Hezbollah, which is devoted to Israel’s destruction.
On Tuesday, the Israeli security cabinet adopted the return of the residents of the north as a major goal of the ongoing war.
Asked whether a diplomatic solution was possible, Avivi said the chances were “almost zero”:
I think there is an understanding that you cannot bring back the citizens home without pushing Hezbollah out of south Lebanon. Now here is a Resolution 1701 , but it is not imposed. And the chances that they will be able, the international community, to impose on Hezbollah, to retreat, it’s almost zero. So I think war is imminent. And we’ll have to do it militarily. And we have to make sure that when we bring back the citizens, it really will be in a reality where they will be safe for decades, and not a year later, tell them to get out of their homes again and send them to hotels again because Hezbollah will continue shooting.
Avivi argued that Israel needed to become more independent of U.S. aid, and needed to be able to defend itself regardless of which party was in office in the United States.
But he also hinted at the problem of the U.S. withholding weapons from Israel — a policy that President Joe Biden has used in an effort to limit Israel’s war effort, and which Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party presidential nominee, vowed just this week to continue.
He said that Israel’s enemies saw the period before the U.S. elections as a “window of opportunity” — and he said that Israel should see it the same way.
Asked whether he meant that Israel would likely go to war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, or against Iran, before the elections, Avivi responded that war in Lebanon was almost certain:
“I think Lebanon, definitely. We need to do so. I hope we’ll do so. Because without doing that, we won’t be able to bring back our citizens [to their homes].”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
