IDF tanks on the border with Lebanon. (AP/Ariel Schalit)
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. (Al-Manar)
The IDF continues to prepare for a retaliatory terror attack by the Lebanese-based Hezbollah terror organization.
The IDF is bolstering its defenses on Israel’s border with Lebanon and has begun deploying concrete barriers in anticipation of a pending attack by the Hezbollah terror organization.
The Times of Israel reported that the blocks were placed on Tuesday along a section of Route 889, the mountainous road on the border with Lebanon.
Israel fears Hezbollah is planning an attack as revenge for the death of notorious terrorist Samir Kuntar in Syria last Saturday, reportedly assassinated in an Israeli airstrike.
The IDF has already instructed Israeli farmers with fields near the northern border to stay away, after it instructed its own forces to maintain a low profile and wear extra protective gear when patrolling near the border.
These moves are accompanied by an escalating war of words between Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Israel.
Nasrallah has twice threatened to retaliate against Israel “at the appropriate time and place and with the appropriate method,” saying such an attack is “inevitable, whatever the consequences.”
IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot warned on Monday that any Hezbollah attack would bring swift retaliation and “severe consequences.”
“We stand ready for every challenge,” he said, according to TOI.
Eisenkot said Israel faced a “complex defense reality” because of the multi-front Syrian war, but said the IDF was prepared to counter any threat.
“Even across our borders, in the face of the threats heard in the north, we stand ready for every challenge. And as we’ve proven in the past, we know how to find those who wish us ill. Our enemies know that if they try to disturb the security of Israel — they will face severe consequences,” the army chief said during a military ceremony in Gelilot, north of Tel Aviv.
Eisenkot did not refer to the terrorist group by name, alluding only to “a threat from the north.”
Hezbollah has already retaliated through a proxy organization which fired three rockets on northern Israel last Sunday, but the IDF maintains that Hezbollah will retaliate in a more severe manner, albeit not a full blown confrontation because Hezbollah is deeply involved in the Syrian civil war and cannot afford to open a new front against Israel.
Ten days after Israel assassinated senior Hezbollah operatives last January, including Jihad Mughniyeh, commander of Hezbollah operations in the Golan Heights, Hezbollah fired five anti-tank missiles at IDF vehicles in the Har Dov region of northern Israel, killing Staff Sergeant Dor Chaim Nini and Captain Yochai Kalangel and wounding seven others.
Israel can expect a similar retaliatory attack, and the IDF is on high alert for such a scenario.
By: United with Israel Staff
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