Israel's army calls for additional troops in Lebanon offensive. The opposition accuses the government of pushing the country towards a “security disaster”

The campaign launched against Hezbollah in Lebanon, where the Israeli army says it has expanded its ground “operation” by “a step”, requires additional troops, the spokesman for the Israeli forces warned, recalling that troops are engaged on multiple fronts, including in the West Bank, Gaza and Syria, AFP, Le Monde and The New York Times wrote.

Brigadier General Effie Defrin, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), told a press briefing that the buffer zone that Israeli forces are trying to create in southern Lebanon “requires additional forces.”

The IDF operates on several fronts, and “for that, more combat soldiers are needed,” the army representative said.

Also on Thursday, according to an IDF statement, Major General Rafi Milo, head of the Northern Command, told troops that the Israeli army had “expanded” its ground operation in southern Lebanon by “one step”.

He claims that Israeli troops have so far killed more than 750 “terrorists” and “destroyed infrastructure throughout Lebanon.”

The opposition accuses the government of “leaving the army wounded on the battlefield”

The main opposition leader, former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, accused the government led by Benjamin Netanyahu of pushing the country towards a “security disaster” due to the shortage of soldiers.

“The government is leaving the army wounded on the battlefield,” Lapid said in a televised statement.

“The government is sending the army into a multi-front war without a strategy, without the necessary means and with far too few soldiers,” he added.

Until now, the Israeli opposition had largely aligned with the government in its war effort against Iran and the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah.

Lapid claims that on Wednesday, the IDF chief warned ministers that the army was struggling to mobilize reservists after more than two years of war and active duty soldiers were “on the brink of collapse”. The remarks attributed to Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir have not been made public.

Yair Lapid calls for the conscription of ultra-orthodox Jews

The opposition leader urged the government to order the recruitment of people from the ultra-Orthodox Haredi community.

In Israel, military service is compulsory, but a rule established when the state was created in 1948, when the ultra-Orthodox community was small, de facto exempts from military service men who devote themselves full-time to the study of Jewish sacred texts.

“The government must stop being cowards, immediately stop all funding for Haredi evaders, send the military police after the defectors and recruit them without hesitation,” Lapid said.