Israel ‘ready for war’ on Lebanon border

The Israeli army says it has reached ‘another phase’ of preparation for war on its northern border with Lebanon.

Smoke billows after an Israeli strike on the southern Lebanese border village of Tayr Harfa on Saturday. Picture: AFP

The Israeli army says it has reached “another phase” of preparation for war on its northern border with Lebanon, where it has spent months exchanging fire with Iran-backed Hezbollah militants.

Hezbollah generally targets ­Israeli positions close to the border, and says it is doing so in support of Hamas militants who have been at war with Israel in the Gaza Strip since the Hamas attack on October 7.

Israel has increasingly carried out deeper strikes into Lebanese territory and has also targeted commanders from Hezbollah.

It has also stepped up strikes against Hezbollah and other Iran-linked targets in Syria, including an airstrike last Monday against Iran’s embassy consular section in Damascus, in what analysts fear could spiral into all-out war. The cross-border hostilities since ­October have killed at least 359 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters, but also at least 70 civilians. The fighting has displaced tens of thousands of people in southern Lebanon and in northern Israel, where the military says 10 soldiers and eight civilians have been killed.

On Sunday the Israeli army said “another phase of the Northern Command’s readiness for war” on the Lebanon front had been completed.

A man wearing a Jewish kippah skullcap fishes with a rod on the boardwalk of the Sea of Galilee in Israel's northern city of Tiberias on Sunday. Picture: AFP

n a statement on its website, the military said commanders “are prepared to summon and equip all the required soldiers in just a few hours … to the front line for defensive and offensive missions”.

The statement came after the military said its fighter jets struck a compound of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Forces “in the area of Khiam”, several kilometres north of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, as well as a command centre near Toura, northeast of the coastal city of Tyre.

Israel had earlier said it hit ­targets in Kawkaba, near Khiam, and Meiss el-Jabal in southern Lebanon in response to rockets fired towards the Golan Heights.

Emmanuel Navon, a political science professor at Tel Aviv University, said on Sunday that it was “unlikely a war in the north can be avoided”. But Israeli security expert Omer Dostri said a land war would not likely happen until the fighting on the ground in Gaza was over.

Hezbollah and Israel last went to war in 2006.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech on Friday that his movement had not yet used its “main” weapons, and reiterated that Hezbollah would cease its attacks only when the war in Gaza ended.

The Israeli military said on ­social media that fighter jets struck “a military complex” and three other infrastructure sites “belonging to Hezbollah’s air defence network” in the Bekaa Valley, about 80km from the closest Israeli ­frontier, after an army drone was shot down.

Iranian leaders have vowed ­retaliation for the embassy strike that killed seven of its Revolutionary Guards.

On Sunday Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the army had “finished all its preparations to react to any scenario that could arise regarding Iran”.

AFP