Israel Escalates Strikes On Hezbollah In First Step Towards War (Videos)

Illustrative image. (The Israeli Defense Forces)

Israel stepped up strikes on Lebanon on November 6, right after Hezbollah rejected any “political negotiation” in an official open letter.

The escalation began with an Israeli strike that targeted the area between the towns of Toura and Aabbasiyyeh in southern Lebanon, the heartland of Hezbollah. The strike killed one person and wounded three others, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

In a statement shortly after the deadly strike, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) alleged that operatives of Hezbollah’s so-called construction unit were targeted.

The operatives were targeted while gathered at a Hezbollah site, the military said, adding that the site was used to “produce equipment used by the organization’s terrorists to restore terror infrastructure” that was destroyed in the fighting last year.

Later, the IDF issued, separately, five evacuation orders for buildings located in the towns of Ayta al-Jabal, Taybeh, Tayr Debba, Zawtar al-Sharqiyah and Kfar Dounine, all located in southern Lebanon.

“The IDF will attack military infrastructure belonging to the Hezbollah terror organization throughout southern Lebanon, in response to its prohibited attempts to rebuild its activities in the area,” Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, warned in a statement released with the first two evacuation orders.

All five buildings were struck. No casualties were reported by Lebanese media, but the strikes did cause a state of panic among people in southern Lebanon.

The strikes were not the most violent to be carried out by the IDF since a ceasefire brokered by the United States entered into effect in Lebanon around a year earlier. However, the military has rarely issued warnings since then. Thus, the evacuation orders were seen as an escalation.

The strikes came after multiple reports by Hebrew and even Western and Arab media accused Hezbollah of rearming by smuggling weapons into Lebanon, including through Syria, in what appears to be a coordinated media campaign meant to justify a new Israeli war.

As the strikes were taking place, chief of the IDF’s Northern Command, Maj. Gen. Rafi Milo said that the military will not allow the terror group to rearm.

“We understand that we must be determined and continue to attack, strike and destroy in order to keep Hezbollah weakened,” said Milo to mayors and leaders of local councils on the northern border.

“We will not allow Hezbollah to establish itself and reorganize on our borders, we will not let it recover. We will continue to attack and operate in the security area and on the front, as a buffer before the residents, and above all we will continue to monitor every threat we see and act against it,” he continued.

Milo added that the IDF “will continue to operate intensively and in an offensive and persistent manner as we have operated over the last year, and as we acted today, for the continued maintenance of civilian routine in the communities and the growth of the north.”

Later, the IDF announced that it completed a wave of airstrikes against infrastructure and weapon depots belonging to Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force in southern Lebanon.

“The Hezbollah terror organization continues attempts to restore terror infrastructure in southern Lebanon and is focusing on rebuilding the [Radwan Force’s] capabilities with the aim of harming the State of Israel,” the military said.

The IDF added that the existence of the Hezbollah infrastructure and weapon depots constitutes a violation of the ceasefire deal.

Hezbollah was apparently expecting the escalation. Ahead of the strikes, Hezbollah publishes an open letter to Lebanon’s three top officials — the prime minister, the president and the parliament speaker — saying that Lebanon should concentrate on ensuring the ceasefire with Israel is implemented and forcing Israel to comply, rather than “being drawn into political negotiations with the Zionist enemy.”

In the letter, the group said that “the government’s hasty decision regarding the monopoly of arms” allowed Israel to exploit the situation and make the disarmament a condition for ending its “violations” of the ceasefire.

It added that the issue of weapons “should be discussed within a national framework and not as a response to a foreign demand or Israeli blackmail.”

Since a ceasefire came into effect in the Gaza Strip early last month, it became clear that Israel will escalate again in Lebanon.

Israel sees an unmissable opportunity to take on Hezbollah once and for all. The group took heavy losses during the last confrontation, which it began more than two years ago in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza, then went on to lose all of its supply lines with the fall of the regime of former President Bashar al-Assad in Syria last year. A new war seems destined to break out in Lebanon, likely within weeks, or even days.

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