Since the ground maneuver began in Lebanon on September 30, the IDF reports that fighters from the 36th and 98th Divisions have uncovered infrastructure Hezbollah had built for years along the Israeli-Lebanese border, seizing vast quantities of weapons, documents, portable drives, and computers.
The army knew what was going on across the border quite well, but were very surprised by the amount of what they found. Apart from Kalashnikov rifles, machine guns, RPG launchers and IEDs, IDF fighters also seized a wide range of anti-tank missiles, rocket launchers and more.
A large part of the loot and infrastructure was destroyed by soldiers of the Corps of Engineers, and quite a bit of it was transferred to Israel in order to produce intelligence information that would help the forces and also for PR purposes.
Two units are responsible for producing this information: the Intelligence Gathering and Technical Booty Collection Unit in the Intelligence Directorate.
The handling of weapons seized by the IDF depends very much on the level of interest. Some of the weapons are destroyed in the field and some are destroyed after they have been collected and examined by experts in the field. Quite a few of the weapons seized by the IDF were sent to storage in places where it is impossible to specify where they are. The preservation of these weapons also depends in no small part on the level of interest of all kinds of bodies in Israel and around the world.
The IDF uses these weapons for training, so that fighters know the advantages and disadvantages of the weapon, and know how best to deal with those means. Some will be sold to different countries. This allows Israel to sell arms to countries with which there are no ties, as part of cooperation that is usually not publicized.
* Mako contributed to this article.
