A Hezbollah fighter. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

In Israel’s next war with Hezbollah, dozens of missiles will strike the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, the IDF Deputy Chief of Staff said on Monday at an event marking the 10th anniversary of the Second Lebanon War, the Hebrew news site nrg reported.

Maj. Gen. Yair Golan — who made this prediction in a speech he delivered at a conference held by the Defense Ministry’s National Emergency Management Authority — also said, however, that the Israeli home front was well-prepared for such a scenario.

“In the Second Lebanon War, seventy tons of explosive warheads hit Israel,” Golan said. “Let’s assume that in the next war it will be four times that amount — some 300 tons in a month. Our air force does that in five hours in Lebanon. Don’t you think we can withstand this? Do we not have a national resilience?”

Golan went on to say, “We’re the country best equipped to deal with emergency scenarios … I look at the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. How many missiles will explode there in a month? Several dozen. We can handle that. The Home Front Command has prepared directives for all authoritative bodies in Israel, and we just need to make sure that everyone does his job seriously and as planned. Israel has an early warning system unparalleled in the world that lets civilians know what to do.”

During the 34-day Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006, Hezbollah peppered northern Israel with thousands of rockets, and 44 Israeli civilians were killed. But central Israel remained untouched. However, due to upgrades in Hezbollah’s rocket and missile arsenal over the past decade, Golan and other believe that would likely not be the case in a future conflict with the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite terrorist organization.

The deputy IDF chief of staff said he opposed on principle any wide-scale evacuation of northern border area residents during a future war with Hezbollah.

“The IDF knows that the best defense is to go on the offense to remove the threat … we must continue to improve the readiness of the home front, but we cannot forget that wars are won by going on the offensive,” he stated.