Gallant: ‘We will not stop fire on Hezbollah even if Gaza ceasefire is reached’

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant declared on Friday that Israel will not stop firing in the north against Hezbollah even if the shooting stops in the Gaza Strip.

Gallant proclaimed during a visit to reserve forces in the Golan Heights: “Attacks against Hezbollah will continue, even if the group ceases fire unilaterally, until the security situation at the Lebanese-Israeli border changes.”

Gallant added: “If Hezbollah thinks that when there is a ceasefire in the south, it will hold fire and we’ll stop, it’s making a big mistake. I say here explicitly: Until we reach a situation in which it’s possible to restore security for residents of the north, we will not stop. When we reach this through a [diplomatic] arrangement or military means, we can be calm.”

Lebanon’s Hezbollah announced on Friday evening that it had targeted a building in the Israeli settlement of Avivim with appropriate weapons, confirming that it had been hit directly.

Hezbollah also confirmed on Friday the targeting of the Israeli Ruwaisat Al-Alam site and the deployment of soldiers around it in the Kfar Shuba Hills and the occupied Lebanese Shebaa Farms with missile weapons.

Read: UN ‘fear’ of Israel’s ground offensive spreading to Rafah

The Israeli Ministry of Defence revealed the number of homes damaged by Hezbollah’s rocket launches from southern Lebanon since last October.

The ministry stated: “427 homes have been damaged by Hezbollah’s missile launches, including 80 homes that were directly damaged.”

In a report, the Associated Press disclosed that the possibility of a large-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah terrifies civilians on both sides of the border, as many believe that this confrontation will be an “inevitable consequence of the Gaza war”.

The agency believed that such a war could be “the most destructive” for both parties to the conflict and that Israel and Hezbollah learned lessons from their last war in 2006.

Escalations continue on the southern front in Lebanon and northern occupied Palestine after Hezbollah announced operations targeting the Israeli army and its points of concentration.

The border between Lebanon and occupied Palestine has witnessed intermittent clashes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, as Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah announced that the Lebanon front is “in support of Gaza”.