Hezbollah rocket fire on Haifa, during the Second Lebanon War. Photo: Wikipedia.

Residents of border communities in northern Israel will no longer be left to fend for themselves if the country enters into another military confrontation with Hezbollah, due to a new plan prepared jointly by the defense establishment and regional councils, the Hebrew news site nrg reported on Wednesday.

According to the plan, if and when a war breaks out, fourteen border communities (including kibbutzim) located along Israel’s border with Lebanon — from where the terrorist organization operates — will be relocated by the IDF to communities in the Emek HaYarden Regional Council. Residents of the 13 Mevo’ot HaHermon communities, meanwhile, will be evacuated even farther away, to the Dead Sea.

The plan was hatched, according to nrg, as result of lessons learned from past confrontations with Hezbollah and preparations for a future war, in the event that recent threats from the terror group’s leader materialize.

Upper Galilee Regional Council Head Giora Zaltz, who led the group conceiving the plan, told nrg that if faced with a renewed threat [of rocket and missile fire from Lebanon into Israel], emergency teams will be on the ready to help residents relocate to kibbutzim and acquaint them with their new surroundings.

Zaltz told nrg that with the outbreak of war, there will be an initial period of a couple of difficult days, “during which we will have to deal with what’s going on by ourselves — not because the state won’t want to help us, but because it will need to be focused on more important strategic missions.”

Nrg suggested that the new plan will prevent the scenario of the Second Lebanon War in 2006, when thousands of residents from northern Israel descended upon friends and family in different parts of the country, to get away from Hezbollah’s daily bombardment. Furthermore, the assessment in the IDF over the past year has been that during the next war, Hezbollah fighters will attempt to take control of Israeli territory. In such a case, according to nrg, residents of the north will have to be evacuated not only for their safety in the face of rocket-fire, but in order to enable the IDF to engage in battle to reconquer the territory.