Israel conducts first of its kind week-long national exercise

Israel is conducting a large-scale national exercise this week to simulate a war with the Hezbollah terrorist group based in Lebanon, on Israel's northern border.

Part of the drill includes evacuating citizens under the threat of bombardment.

Though the northern border has been relatively quiet, several lone rockets were launched at Israel over the past few months. Israel is believed to have attacked Hezbollah and Iranian targets in Lebanon and Syria as well in the past year.

The drill comes after an 11-day war between Israel and Gaza on the southern border in May. In that time some 4,300 rockets were fired at Israeli communities.

“We will test what we learned and experienced at levels I didn’t anticipate in terms of the domestic front,” Brig. Gen. Itzik Bar, chief of staff of the IDF Home Front Command, told reporters.

During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, Hezbollah launched more than 4,000 rockets at Israel over 34 days. The terror group, backed by Iran, is believed to have an even larger arsenal now than it did back then.

Earlier this month, Uri Gordin, chief of the army's Home Front Command, warned that with Hezbollah's current arsenal, "we are looking at between 1,500 and 2,500 rockets fired daily towards Israel."

Last week, Israel conducted the Blue Flag exercise, the largest-ever multinational military aerial drill hosted by the Jewish state. Organized every other year in the Israeli Negev Desert since 2013, keeps expanding in size. This year, nine countries participated, including senior officials from the Emirati Air Force.