Northern Command
The Northern Command is a regional command whose headquarters are located in Safed. Its commander is Major General Ori Gordin and its objective is to defend Israel’s northern borders (with Lebanon and Syria in the Galilee and Golan Heights areas). The challenges on the Lebanese border are varied and focus on the threats from Hezbollah, including Hezbollah’s continued armament, growing rocket arsenal, and kidnapping attempts. The Syrian border poses different challenges, as Syria is ruled by a hostile and unstable regime. Hostile forces in both Syria and Lebanon are supported heavily, in terms of arms, money, training and logistical support, by the Iranian regime.
The command was established at the end of the War of Independence as part of the establishment of the IDF's regional commands. Over the years, the Northern Command has dealt with complex wars and operations.
The Northern Front is an Israeli military front, where the armed conflict takes place along the borders with Syria and Lebanon . Confrontations often occur between the occupation forces and the armed resistance in the two countries - especially the Lebanese Hezbollah - and its operational and intelligence activity is concentrated in the Golan Heights and the areas located on both sides of the Blue Line in the occupied Galilee and southern Lebanon. The northern front is the third main front on which Israel is waging confrontations against the resistance, after the Gaza Strip and West Bank fronts , and it poses major challenges to it due to Hezbollah’s possession of a strong infrastructure and enormous military equipment, based on strong and constant support from Iran.
After the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood, which was launched by the Palestinian resistance on October 7, 2023, on the settlements of the Gaza Envelope , the northern front witnessed a sharp military escalation between the Israeli forces and Hezbollah, with the participation of other Palestinian and Lebanese resistance factions. The bloody confrontations resulted in massive destruction, displacement, and significant human and material losses on both sides of the conflict.
The northern front has a strategic importance that deeply affects the reality of the occupying state and its future in all security, military, political, economic and demographic fields. The importance of this front - which Israel is committed to strengthening its capabilities in and maintaining them within a superior military position - is due to a set of complex and intertwined data.
Northern Israel is a border area of great strategic importance from a security and military standpoint, with a border stretching for about 120 kilometers. The challenges on the other side of the border are diverse, including Hezbollah, Palestinian resistance factions in the refugee camps in southern Lebanon, an unstable and “hostile” Syrian regime, and armed Palestinian factions in Syria. The situation is further exacerbated by the fact that most of these groups receive ongoing military and material support from Iran.
Hezbollah’s superior military capabilities: Hezbollah is considered Israel’s most dangerous enemy on the northern front, as it has superior intelligence and military capabilities, and an army of professional fighters estimated - according to the CIA in the 2021 “World Factbook” - at 45,000 fighters, including about 20,000 full-time soldiers.
The party possesses a huge arsenal of weapons in terms of quantity and quality, estimated at around 150,000 rockets, missiles and other lethal weapons, including medium and long-range guided missiles that can hit precise targets throughout Israel, and are capable of destroying the vital infrastructure of civilian, economic and military targets, and causing heavy human losses. In addition, the party possesses highly advanced cyber systems, a dense and complex network of tunnels and bunkers to house artillery units and keep them away from Israeli air attacks, and the party enjoys constant and strong Iranian military and material support.
All of these factors qualify Hezbollah to continue a long-term war that causes the occupation great damage without the party losing much, which requires high military and tactical readiness from the Israeli forces.
Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has relied on building “firm roots” in the land through settlement and changing the demographic composition of the occupied territories, to ensure a geographical extension supported by a solid human extension. This includes its keenness to build settlements along the northern border of occupied Palestine with Lebanon , and to construct settlements in the occupied Syrian Golan.
The settlers of the north, especially the residents of the border areas, enjoy an “exceptional national value” in Israeli culture as the “first founders,” the most attached to the land, and the human wall protecting Israel’s borders in the face of direct challenges and ongoing clashes.
The conflict on the northern front affects the demographic structure of the population, as periods of intense conflict are interspersed with displacements that are mostly voluntary in nature. However, the equation changed following the Battle of the Flood of Al-Aqsa, as displacement took on a more severe and widespread form, based on official government orders, following Hezbollah’s missile strikes on Israeli settlements and communities in the north.
In October 2023, Israeli authorities evacuated about 80,000 Israelis from dozens of settlements and population centers located near the Lebanese border, and the Israeli army announced for the first time that the area extending from the Lebanese border to a distance of 4 kilometers is a "closed military zone" that is forbidden to settlers, who were evacuated to the central and interior areas in order to reduce human losses and focus on the battles in Gaza.
Local surveys indicated that about 40% of the evacuated population are reluctant to return to their homes after the war ends, and 10% of those who were not evacuated expressed a desire to leave the north permanently, which poses a threat to the future of the demographic structure in the region, which Israel has worked hard to establish and nurture since the 1960s by lavishing spending on settlement plans and implementing urban projects, to Judaize the Galilee and settle Jews there.
The deteriorating security, economic and social situation in the north created a state of disobedience among the heads of the settlements in the region, who in May 2024 called for unilateral separation from the state and the declaration of the “establishment of the State of Galilee.” As the situation worsened, Israeli forces shifted their focus to the northern front, and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant repeatedly stated the need to expand the scope of the war's objectives, to ensure the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes.
The northern regions are considered the main water reservoir for Israel, as they contain the sources of fresh rivers and springs, with a vast expanse of fertile lands with diverse topography, which contributes effectively to promoting rich and diverse agricultural development, which has qualified the Galilee to be an agricultural and industrial center and a major source of food security in the country.
The area includes hundreds of industrial and commercial facilities, and thousands of production and investment projects. The evacuations have caused a complete shutdown of industrial, agricultural and production sectors. In August 2024, a report issued by the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu estimated the losses in the agricultural sector and the total cost of food loss during 10 months of war at about one billion shekels (about $265 million).
The north is also of touristic importance to Israel, as it includes more than a thousand tourist sites, varying between recreational, cultural and historical tourism, and is visited by about 1.5 million tourists annually. The tourism sector in the region has also suffered huge losses. According to official reports, the loss of direct income from tourism amounted to 1.15 billion shekels (about 305 million dollars), in addition to 2.645 billion shekels (about 700 million dollars) in lost revenues in tourism support departments.
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