IDF sets sights on Hezbollah assault

The Israeli forces chief has foreshadowed military action in Lebanon, from where Hezbollah has been trading fire with Israel for months.

An Israeli artillery unit fires across the border towards Lebanon. Hezbollah has traded cross-border fire with Israel in the most significant clashes since 2006. Picture: Amir Levy/Getty Images

The head of the Israeli Defence Forces has said the country is preparing for military action in Lebanon.

Herzi Halevi, the chief of staff, told reservists at a military base that, after months of simmering tension on its northern border, Israel would act if Hezbollah did not withdraw from the area.

“You are doing an excellent job of operational defence in the north, and we are preparing for an offensive in the north,” Lt Gen Halevi said.

He did not elaborate on what such an offensive would entail or its timing.

Chief of the General Staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi speaking to military officers at Nevatim airbase in southern Israel in April. Picture: IDF/AFP

About 70,000 Israelis have fled their homes near the border after months of rocket attacks by Hezbollah since October 7, with 10 civilians and 12 soldiers killed.

A hundred thousand people have left southern Lebanon, and 300 militants and 50 civilians have been killed in Israeli air strikes.

Western efforts to broker an agreement have proved fruitless. Israel is demanding that Hezbollah adhere to a 2006 United Nations resolution that called on the group to disarm and withdraw its militants about 18 miles from the border with Israel.

The UN resolution was passed to end a month-long war triggered by a Hezbollah cross-border raid.

People gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a vehicle in the Adloun plain area, between Lebanon's southern cities of Sidon and Tyre, in April. Picture: Mahmoud Zayyat/AFP

Hezbollah is now conducting attacks alongside other Iranian-backed militia to pressure Israel into ending the war in Gaza against Hamas.

The group has limited its strikes to northern Israel, but Israeli officials have said the 70,000 displaced residents cannot return while the threat from the Lebanese militant group remains.

CNN reported in February that US officials believed that Israel would conduct a ground offensive into Lebanon in the late spring or early summer should diplomacy fail.

Hezbollah, which holds sway in southern Lebanon and is armed by Iran, has an arsenal of more than 100,000 rockets and tens of thousands of battle-hardened soldiers, and is proscribed as a terrorist group in the UK.

It fought pitched battles with the Israeli military in the 2006 war, which ended indecisively, but came under intense criticism in Lebanon for starting a war that devastated parts of the country.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Hezbollah in December that it would invite destruction upon Lebanon. “If Hezbollah chooses to start an all-out war then it will, by its own hand, turn Beirut and southern Lebanon into Gaza,” he said.

The war in Gaza started after the Palestinian militant group Hamas massacred 1200 Israelis and took more than 240 people hostage.

The Israeli military operation in Gaza has since killed 34,500 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

The Times