Israel’s Army Kicks Off Drills on Borders with Lebanon, Gaza

 Part of the Israeli army’s military drills conducted in the northern region. (AFP)
Part of the Israeli army’s military drills conducted in the northern region. (AFP)
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Israel’s Army Kicks Off Drills on Borders with Lebanon, Gaza

 Part of the Israeli army’s military drills conducted in the northern region. (AFP)
Part of the Israeli army’s military drills conducted in the northern region. (AFP)

The Israeli army launched military drills on Saturday on the borders with Gaza Strip and the northern borders with Lebanon.

According to the army spokesman, dubbed “Hot Winter 2,” the drills on Gaza borders were carried out by the Gaza Division, during which explosions were heard and the army forces and military vehicles were observed.

He affirmed that the drills were planned in advance and aimed at “raising the efficiency and readiness of the army forces and sending a message to the armed Palestinian organizations that Israel is prepared to launch strikes in case of any missile escalation.”

However, the drills on the northern borders with Lebanon were carried out without any prior preparations and will continue until Tuesday.

They are aimed at “strengthening the readiness of fighting units and the army’s logistics for sudden events and various scenarios in the northern arena,” the army noted.

The department of technology, information and intelligence took part in the drills.

Some 8,000 conscripts and 5,000 reservist troops are participating in the drill, the army said, adding that the reservist troops were called up specifically for the drill.

Earlier this month, the Israeli Air Force conducted a series of joint aerial exercises with the US and French military simulating strikes against Iran’s nuclear reactors.

According to the army classifications, the upcoming war “could be partial on one front or could take place on several fronts simultaneously.”

It also divides threats three circles, the first includes border countries and regions such as Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip, while the second includes more distant countries, including Yemen and Iraq, the third includes Iran.

Observers linked the sudden drills on Lebanon's borders and the threats announced by Israeli leaders in the weekend to bombing Beirut airport if it were to be used for smuggling Iranian weapons, as it did with Syria.

Sources in Tel Aviv said Israel is determined to prevent Iran from transferring arms shipments at any cost to Syria or Lebanon.

They pointed out the the visit made by Secretary-General of Lebanon’s Hezbollah Hassan Nasarallah to Damascus and his meeting with President Bashar al-Assad in late November tackled the challenges facing Iran and its Lebanese proxy in Syria due to Israel’s strikes and alternative ways to transfer weapons.



Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

 Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
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Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

 Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)

Family members of Syrians who disappeared in the 14-year civil war on Sunday gathered in the city of Daraa and called on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them.

The United Nations in 2021 estimated that over 130,000 Syrians were taken away and disappeared, many of them detained by Bashar al-Assad's network of intelligence agencies, as well as by opposition fighters and the extremist ISIS group. Advocacy group The Syrian Campaign says some 112,000 are still missing to this day.

When opposition led by group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham overthrew President Bashar Assad in April, they stormed prisons and released detainees from the ousted government's dungeons.

Families of the missing quickly rushed to the prisons seeking their loved ones. While there were some reunions, rescue services also discovered mass graves around the country and used whatever remains they could retrieve to identify the dead.

Wafa Mustafa held a placard of her father, Ali, who was detained by the Assad government's security forces in 2013. She fled a week later to Germany, fearing she would also be detained, and hasn't heard from him since.

Like many other Syrians who fled the conflict or went into exile for their activism, she often held protests and rallied in European cities. Now, she has returned twice since Assad's ouster, trying to figure out her father's whereabouts.

“I’m trying, feeling both hope and despair, to find any answer on the fate of my father,” she told The Associated Press. “I searched inside the prisons, the morgues, the hospitals, and through the bodies of the martyrs, but I still couldn’t find anything.”

A United Nations-backed commission on Friday urged the government led by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa to preserve evidence and anything they can document from prisons in the ongoing search for the disappeared and to pursue perpetrators.

Some foreign nationals are missing in Syria as well, notably American journalist Austin Tice, whose mother visited Syria in January and met with al-Sharaa. Tice has not been heard from other than a video released weeks after his disappearance in 2012 that showed him blindfolded and held by armed men.

Syria’s conflict started as one of the popular uprisings of the so-called 2011 Arab Spring, before Assad crushed the largely peaceful protests and a civil war erupted. Half a million people have been killed and more than 5 million left the country as refugees.