Israeli army announces having “approved” offensive plans in Lebanon

Cross-border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, have been almost daily since the attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement against Israel on October 7, which triggered the war in the Gaza Strip.

The tone is still rising as violence persists on the border between Israel and Lebanon. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Tuesday, June 18, threatened Lebanese Hezbollah with “total war”, in a press release shared on X. “We are very close to the moment when we will decide to change the rules of the game against Hezbollah and Lebanon”warned the Israeli official. “In a total war, Hezbollah will be destroyed and Lebanon will be hit hard”he continued, while the army announced in the evening that it had approved operational plans for “offensive in Lebanon”, during a meeting between generals devoted to a “situation assessment”.

Clashes between Israel and Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, have been almost daily in this border area since the attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement against Israel on October 7 and the outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip.

“The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has lasted long enough,” said Tuesday the emissary of American President Joe Biden, Amos Hochstein, traveling to Beirut to advocate de-escalation. The situation is “severe” and the United States wants to avoid “a full-scale war”declared the American envoy.

Hezbollah, which claimed to have carried out more than 2,100 military operations against Israel since October 8, intensified its attacks on military targets in the north of that country last week, after the elimination of one of its top commanders in an Israeli strike. More than eight months of violence have left at least 473 dead in Lebanon, including a majority of fighters from the Lebanese Islamist movement and 92 civilians, according to an AFP count. On the Israeli side, at least 15 soldiers and 11 civilians were killed, according to Israel.

On Tuesday afternoon, warning sirens sounded again several times until the early evening in various locations in northern Israel. However, at the same time, Hezbollah published images presented as taken by a drone of the movement above Haifa, a major port in northern Israel. While the video could not be independently verified, Israel’s foreign minister accusedhe leader of the Lebanese Islamist group, Hassan Nasrallah, of “[se vanter] of having photographed the ports of Haifa (…) and threatening to damage them”, to support his point.