Israel vows to repel Hezbollah terrorists as fighting intensifies
Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah ‘must understand that he’s next’.
Senior Israeli ministers have declared they will drive Hezbollah from the Jewish state’s northern border, saying the terror group’s chief could be their next target, following an air strike that killed two Australian citizens, one of whom the Iranian-backed terror organisation claimed as its own.
Experts say the chances of an escalation in the war between Israel and Hezbollah are dramatically increasing, following the intensification of fighting in recent days.
Benny Gantz – a member of Israel’s war cabinet who is considered one of the most likely candidates to succeed an under-pressure Benjamin Netanyahu – on Thursday (AEDT) threatened military action along the Lebanese border.
“I say to our friends around the world: the situation in the northern border necessitates change,” the former Israeli Defence Forces general said.
“The time for a diplomatic solution is running out. If the world and the government of Lebanon don’t act to stop the fire toward northern communities and to push Hezbollah away from the border, the IDF will do that.”
Military chief of staff Herzi Halevi said Israel’s northern command, along the Lebanese border, was in a “state of very high readiness”.
“We need to be prepared to strike if required,” Lieutenant General Halevi said.
The warnings to Hezbollah came as Israeli forces intensified their ground offensive in refugee camps in the central Gaza Strip and Egyptian officials worked with Qatar to advance a multiphase proposal to end the war – a plan that neither Hamas nor Israel is likely to accept in its current form.
Israel’s top general, Herzi Halevi, said this week that “the war will continue for many more months”, given the complexity of uprooting Hamas.
Foreign Minister Eli Cohen meanwhile toured Israel’s border with Lebanon with foreign ambassadors, saying Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, “must understand that he’s next”.
Mr Cohen – whose comments came a day after a Hezbollah attack wounded 11 people in northern Israel – said the Iranian-backed terror group must respect a 2006 UN Security Council resolution that called on the group to withdraw north of the Litani River, away from the border.
“We will work to resolve everything diplomatically,” Mr Cohen said.
“If it doesn’t work, all options are on the table.”
Hezbollah has been firing rockets at Israel since the war with Hamas began on October 7, when Palestinian terrorists raided the Jewish state, murdering 1200 Israelis and kidnapping about 240 people.
Tens of thousands of Israelis have been displaced from the Lebanon border area as a consequence.
Australian brothers Ali and Ibrahim Bazzi, and Ibrahim’s wife Shourouk Hammoud, were in the southern Lebanese Hezbollah stronghold of Bint Jbeil when they were killed by the Israeli air strike.
The attack was in response to the intensification of Hezbollah’s strikes on Israel following Israel’s killing on Monday of high-ranking Iranian army general Razi Mousavi, who was targeted by an air strike in the Syrian capital of Damascus.
Australian Strategic Policy Institute senior fellow Peter Jennings said the Israel-Lebanon border was becoming a “very dangerous zone of conflict, with daily rocket attacks and Israeli retaliatory strikes”. Hezbollah posed a greater danger than Hamas, he added.
“It hasn’t built up into the full-on conflict that some people were concerned about post the 7th of October, but it is still I think a highly dangerous war zone,” Mr Jennings said.
“Israel has been thinking about do they need to strike themselves in order to push Hezbollah back from the northern border. That’s not yet happened, but the larger part of the Israeli military is actually mobilised in the north of the country rather than dealing with the Gaza situation.
“Hezbollah is a bigger threat. It has significantly more rockets, more fighters, and it’s just north of the main Israeli population centres so that makes them a much bigger threat.”
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