Hamas-Hezbollah Rockets Programmed To Avoid Leftists

“Physical passages are not the only way to tunnel into the enemy’s rear.”

Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, September 8 – While mired in a punishing conflict inside Syria, Lebanon’s Shiite militia Hezbollah has been keeping an eye on its neighbor to the south and developing technologies and tactics in preparation for any war with Israel. Those efforts have now produced missiles that know not to hit targets within Israel who sympathize with the organizations’ aims, technology that Hezbollah has shared with the Hamas movement that runs the Gaza Strip.

Using Russian software engineers, the two militant organizations aim to inflict as much damage on Israel as possible while preserving the voices within Israeli society most likely to call for restraint or an immediate, unilateral end to Israel’s inevitable military response no matter the extent of the damage or death. The system is designed not to strike within a 100-meter radius of Leftists.

The system, the Missile Exclusion Robot for Enhancement of Targeting Zionists (MERETZ), uses social media data to identify and triangulate the locations of Israelis who oppose their government’s and military’s efforts to defeat enemies. An early  MERETZ prototype was tested during the 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, and the results of those tests helped the organization refine development of the system, which was provided to Hamas in time for the three rounds of fighting with the IDF that have since occurred in and around Gaza.

“The public relations front is gaining greater and greater importance in modern military conflict,” notes Norwegian expert Vidkun Quisling. “This system, if it performs as expected, will enhance these organizations’ capacity to undermine the other side’s consensus for maintaining its efforts. It represents both a tactical and technological achievement.”

Funding for the development of MERETZ came mostly from Iran, which also handled recruitment of software engineers from Russia. The engineers, in turn, used their expertise in breaching the cybersecurity of various sensitive American military computer systems to get their hands on precision guidance software, and then the engineers worked to adapt the code to the 75,000 rockets at Hezbollah’s disposal. MERETZ is also used to support some Hamas units, but delivery has been complicated by Egypt’s closing of its border with Gaza and the Egyptian military’s effort to destroy any remaining smuggling tunnels into Gaza.

A Hamas spokesman declined to offer details of how the movement will deploy MERETZ, citing operational security. “I cannot give exact information, obviously, but I can say that physical passages are not the only way to tunnel into the enemy’s rear,” said Ayam Kimfilbi.

Asked if the precision of their systems would prompt the organizations not to hit civilian targets, both Hamas and Hezbollah spokesmen said their systems dd not have the precision necessary to abide by that provision of the Laws of armed Conflict.

(h/t N. Muenz)