Official report: Israel could become ‘uninhabitable’ in Hezbollah war

If a full-scale war with Hezbollah were to break out, Israel would be “uninhabitable” after 72 hours, a senior Israeli energy official said.

The official, who heads the company that plans Israel’s electricity systems, issued the warning on Thursday but later backtracked, The Times of Israel.

“We are not in a good position and we are not prepared for a real war. We live in a fantasy world,” said Shaul Goldstein, head of Independent System Operator Ltd.

He added that there could be no promise of electricity supply in the event of war.

“After 72 hours without electricity, it will be impossible to live here. We are not prepared for a real war,” he said during a conference in the city of Sderot near the Gaza Strip.

During the meeting, he was asked whether he could guarantee a continuous power supply in the event of an emergency.

Goldstein responded that Beirut’s power grid was largely identical to Israel’s and could easily be damaged if the destruction of the country’s power grid were called for.

The comments dominated headlines in the Israeli media and forced Goldstein to admit he had made a slip of the tongue after government officials condemned his remarks.

“I made irresponsible comments that I should not have made,” he told the Israeli Can Channel.

Israel Electric Company CEO Meir Shpilger called Goldstein’s comments “irresponsible and unrealistic” and distanced the company from his comments and predictions.

Energy Secretary Eli Cohen also sharply criticized Goldstein’s comments on X.

“The State of Israel will not be left in the dark. The likelihood of a blackout lasting days is very low,” he wrote on X, adding that Israel can generate electricity from a variety of sources and that it has “huge coal reserves.”

In a series of posts, he also issued a stark warning to Lebanon following a speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

“If there is a blackout in Israel lasting hours, there will be a blackout in Lebanon lasting months,” he said.

Israeli officials have ramped up their rhetoric in recent weeks as Hezbollah attacks in northern Israel become more brazen. On Tuesday evening, they said they had approved an “operational plan” for an offensive in Lebanon.

Since October, more than 100,000 Israelis have been displaced from their homes in the north, putting pressure on the Israeli government to restore calm along the border.

Nasrallah said this week that Hezbollah does not want a full-scale war with Israel, but is instead fighting to put pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

He also made it clear that if Israel starts a war, “there will be no place on the enemy’s (Israel’s) territory that our missiles will not reach.”