The Israeli army announced today the start of the construction of an underground sensor network across the border with Lebanon to monitor the construction of any tunnel across the border.
This project comes a year after the Israeli army announced the destruction of a group of infiltration tunnels dug by Lebanese Hezbollah.
"All excavation work is taking place on the Israeli side of the Blue Line," the military spokesman, Jonathan Konricos, said in reference to the border demarcation line with Lebanon.
He added that the network Israel intends to establish is "not a wall" but rather sensors to monitor vibrations and underground sound.
He said that Israel had informed the UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon of this action "to ensure that everyone is aware of what we are doing and that we are working on the Israeli side" of the border.
He continued that the establishment of the network begins today in the Israeli border village of Misgav Am, and that drilling there could continue for two months.
"In general, the plan is to expand the sensor sites and place them in additional locations along the blue line," Conricus said. No date has been announced for the completion of construction work.
"This is a precautionary measure ... Our current estimates indicate that there are no offensive cross-border tunnels," he added.
It is noteworthy that a confrontation took place on the border between Israel and Hezbollah in September with the party targeting an Israeli military mechanism on the opposite side of the border, in an attack that the party said was in response to two "Israeli" attacks a week ago against it in Syria and Lebanon.
The year 2006 also witnessed a month-long confrontation between the two sides, which killed more than 1,200 Lebanese, most of them civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers.