Israel warns of intensifying attacks against Hezbollah

Israeli troops raided southern Lebanon last week, leading President Joseph Aoun to order the Lebanese army to resist future incursions. (EPA Images pic)

JERUSALEM: Israel on Sunday signalled it could intensify operations in Lebanon against Hezbollah, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused of rearming, urging Beirut to disarm the Iran-backed group.

Despite a November 2024 ceasefire with the Lebanese militant group, Israel maintains troops in five areas in southern Lebanon and has kept up regular strikes.

“Hezbollah is playing with fire, and the president of Lebanon is dragging his feet,” defence minister Israel Katz said in a statement.

“The Lebanese government’s commitment to disarm Hezbollah and remove it from southern Lebanon must be implemented. Maximum enforcement will continue and even intensify – we will not allow any threat to the residents of the north.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Hezbollah was attempting to “rearm” itself.

“We expect the Lebanese government to fulfil its commitment – to disarm Hezbollah – but it is clear we will exercise our right of self-defence under the terms of the ceasefire,” Netanyahu told the cabinet at its weekly meeting on Sunday.

“We will not allow Lebanon to become a renewed front against us, and we will act as necessary,” he said, according to a statement issued by his office.

Thousands of Israelis living near the northern border with Lebanon were forced to evacuate their homes for months after Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel following the outbreak of the war in Gaza in October 2023.

Latest strike 

That set off a more than year-long conflict that culminated in two months of open war before last year’s ceasefire was agreed.

The Iran-backed militant group, which opposes Israel, has been badly weakened by the war but remains armed and financially resilient.

In September 2024, Israel killed the group’s long-time chief, Hassan Nasrallah, along with many other senior leaders over the course of the war.

Since the ceasefire, the US has increased pressure on Lebanese authorities to disarm the group, a move opposed by Hezbollah and its allies.

The Lebanese government has drawn up a plan to impose a state monopoly on weapons and said the army has begun implementing it, starting in the country’s south.

Israel never stopped carrying out air strikes in Lebanon in spite of the truce – usually saying it is targeting Hezbollah positions – and has stepped up the attacks in recent days.

On Thursday, Israeli ground troops carried out a deadly raid into southern Lebanon, prompting Lebanese President Joseph Aoun to order the army to confront such incursions.

Aoun had called for talks with Israel in mid-October, after US President Donald Trump helped broker a ceasefire in Gaza.

But Aoun later accused Israel of responding to his offer by intensifying its strikes, the latest of which killed four people in the Nabatiyeh district on Saturday, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

‘Our enemy’ 

The official Lebanese National News Agency reported that the Israeli army hit a car “with a guided missile”.

The Israeli military confirmed the strike, saying it killed a member of Hezbollah’s Radwan Force in southern Lebanon.

“The terrorist was involved in transferring weapons and in efforts to re-establish Hezbollah’s terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon,” the military said, adding three other members of the group were also killed.

The previous day, it had announced the killing of a “Hezbollah maintenance official”, who it said was working to restore the movement’s infrastructure.

Hundreds of people gathered in Nabatiyeh on Sunday to pay tribute to the Hezbollah members killed.

Participants threw flower petals onto the coffins, draped in the Hezbollah flag, chanting: “Death to Israel, death to America.”

“This is the price that southern Lebanon pays every day,” Rana Hamed, the mother of one of the five men killed, told AFP. “We have known that Israel has been our enemy for decades.”