An Israeli army general said on Wednesday that the Zionist entity believes Hezbollah has probably dug tunnels across the border from Lebanon in preparation for any future war although it has no conclusive evidence.

An Israeli army general said on Wednesday that the Zionist entity believes Hezbollah has probably dug tunnels across the border from Lebanon in preparation for any future war although it has no conclusive evidence.

"We have no positive information meaning that there are tunnels. The situation is not similar to what there was around the Gaza Strip," Major-General Yair Golan, commander of Israeli forces on the Lebanese and Syrian fronts, told Army Radio, according to Reuters news agency.

"That said, this idea of going below ground is not foreign to Lebanon and is not foreign to Hezbollah and so we have to suppose as a working assumption that there are tunnels. These have to be looked for and prepared for."

Israel's vulnerability to tunnels was laid bare during its war against Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas in Gaza in July and August. What began as shelling exchanges with Hamas, escalated into a ground offensive in a bid to destroy secret passages dug from Gaza into the occupied territories to launch surprise attacks.

Residents of northern Israel, who were battered by Hezbollah rockets during a month-long war in 2006, have at times reported underground noises suggesting that guerrillas were burrowing across the frontier in a new tactic. The Israeli military says searches it has carried out have turned up nothing.

Golan said Hezbollah appeared unlikely to seek a renewed conflict with Israel.
Were that to happen, he said, Israel would hit Lebanese targets hard but would also suffer from a Hezbollah rocket arsenal believed to be 10 times more potent than Hamas's.

"We will not be able to provide the umbrella that was provided in the south by Iron Dome," Golan said, referring to an aerial interceptor system.

"We and Hezbollah are conducting a kind of mutual-deterrence balance," he said, while cautioning that isolated flare-ups on the border could still boil over into war.

"There is no absolute deterrence. Each side has its pain threshold, its restraint threshold, which when passed prompt it to take action."