The chief of the Israel Defense Forces’ Northern Command acknowledged recently that the military had overestimated the damage done to Hezbollah’s capabilities during the 2024 ground offensive in Lebanon, after the terror group returned to attacking Israel in recent weeks amid the fighting with Iran.

Maj. Gen. Rafi Milo met on Tuesday with a group from Misgav Am after one of the northern kibbutz’s residents, 60-year-old Ofer Moskovitz, was mistakenly killed by IDF artillery shelling last month.

In recordings aired by Channel 12 on Saturday evening, Milo could be heard apologizing to the residents, acknowledging that the lethal incident “shouldn’t have happened.”

He then admitted that there was a “gap” between the IDF’s assessment of damage caused to Hezbollah’s offensive capabilities during the 2024 ground operation in southern Lebanon, and the force with which the terror group has been striking Israel’s northern communities in recent weeks.

His comments came more than a month after Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, renewed its rocket and drone fire on Israel amid the US-Israeli war with the Islamic Republic.

Since then, Hezbollah has been firing hundreds of rockets a day, according to the IDF. However, the vast majority of the daily rocket fire has been directed at Israeli forces operating in southern Lebanon, with only a few dozen projectiles crossing the border into Israel.

“There is a gap between how we finished [Operation] ‘Northern Arrows’ and what we understood and thought, and how suddenly, we still find Hezbollah [active], Milo said to residents.

“What I’m sure is concerning you all is the steep-trajectory [rocket] fire,” he said, moving to reassure them that the terror group had yet to launch rockets in “very, very large amounts,” and that most of those they did fire were aimed at IDF troops.

Despite his attempts to calm residents’ nerves, Channel 12 reported that a day after Milo’s meeting, the IDF shifted its assessment of Hezbollah’s current capabilities, understanding the terror group to be stronger still than estimated.

The change came in the wake of the heavy rocket barrages launched by Hezbollah at Israel over the course of the Passover holiday, which began Wednesday evening.

Now, officials reportedly estimate that the terror group has hundreds of launchers and tens of thousands of rockets at its disposal.

Before the outbreak of the war triggered by the October 7 Hamas-led attacks in southern........

© The Times of Israel