Israel starts building mock Lebanese village to train forces against Hezbollah
Iran Press TV
Thursday, 04 September 2025 7:37 PM
The Israeli army has begun constructing a facility in the occupied Golan that resembles a Lebanese village, where Israeli soldiers would get training for a possible future war with Lebanon's Hezbollah resistance movement.
Media outlets quoting military sources reported Thursday that Israel inaugurated a new training base dubbed "Little Lebanon" on the ruins of the abandoned Syrian village of Zaoura in the occupied northwestern Golan Heights.
The facility, which is modeled after a Shia village in south Lebanon, has a mock Hezbollah command and features high-rises, fortified buildings, tunnels, and surveillance cameras.
It will be large enough to accommodate tanks and allow soldiers to conduct live-fire exercises in simulated urban warfare.
It allows soldiers and tanks to conduct live-fire exercises in simulated urban warfare.
The training ground even replicates terrain details like bushes, boulders, and elevated structures that dominate rugged landscapes in south Lebanon, the reports said
Lt. Col. Zohar, a senior Israeli army official, openly admitted that the base was designed using lessons from battles against the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement.
"We learned from the fighters we maneuvered against to better prepare for the next campaign."
Israel has previously built a similar facility called "Mali" at an army base in Tze'elim to simulate urban combat against the Gaza-based Hamas resistance movement.
Unlike the army's "Little Gaza" in Tse'elim, which bans live ammunition, "Little Lebanon" allows full-scale fire, bulldozers, and explosives.
The report comes as the Israeli regime has intensified its aerial assaults on southern Lebanon in recent weeks despite an existing ceasefire.
The attacks come amid ongoing violations across various parts of Lebanon, despite the ceasefire announced on November 27, 2024.
Hezbollah, itself, has, meanwhile, vowed not to lay down its arms, cautioning that the Israeli regime's managing to implement the disarmament scheme via the US would be followed by Tel Aviv's seeking to further expand its occupation.
The secretary-general of the Hezbollah resistance movement, in a recent speech, called upon the Lebanese government to restore the Arab nation's sovereignty, emphasizing that his group will not lay down its arms and won't allow the Israeli enemy to freely attack and occupy Lebanon.
He pointed to Washington's excessive interference in Lebanon's domestic affairs, arguing it is the party chiefly pushing for the disarmament of Hezbollah, irrespective of the fact that the resistance movement is protecting Lebanon's soil, security, and sovereignty with its arms.
The Hezbollah chief then invited Lebanese officials to stop making mistakes, reminding them that the role of his resistance group is now more significant than ever.
He stated that Hezbollah played a prominent role in the liberation of eastern Lebanon territories from the clutches of Daesh and other Takfiri terrorist groups.
Since its inception in 1982, the movement has fended off countless incursions into the country by the Israeli regime, which has been occupying Shebaa Farms, a strip of land along Lebanon's border with the occupied Palestinian territories, since 1967.
The defensive push has included the group's forcing the Israeli military to retreat during two full-scale wars against the nation in 2000 and 2006.
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