Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Wednesday that Hezbollah must be pushed back from the Israeli border, and if it’s not achieved through diplomatic means, Israel will take military action.
The comments suggest Israel is considering opening a second front in Lebanon beyond the cross-border strikes Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging since October 7.
According to a recent report from Axios, some US officials are concerned that Israel might provoke Hezbollah to justify a wider war in Lebanon. The report said that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had “expressed concern” in a phone call with Gallant in November about the risk of escalation on Israel’s northern border.
Gallant made the comments on Wednesday while visiting the northern coastal city of Nahariyya. He said the Israeli government would not encourage the approximately 80,000 civilians who evacuated areas of northern Israel to return to their homes until Hezbollah is pushed back beyond the Litani River, which is 18 miles north of the Israel-Lebanon border in southern Lebanon.
At the end of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, UN Security Council Resolution 1701 established a demilitarized zone between the border and the Litani River, requiring Israeli forces to withdraw from southern Lebanon and Hezbollah to move north of the river.
According to The Times of Israel, Gallant said the best option would be to reach a diplomatic solution to agree on the enforcement of Resolution 1701. If that didn’t happen, he said Israel would “act with all the means at its disposal” to push Hezbollah back through military action.
Last month, Gallant threatened a major war with Lebanon, saying Israel could turn Beirut into rubble like Gaza. “Hezbollah is dragging Lebanon to a possible war, and is making mistakes,” he said. “What we can do in Gaza, we can also do in Beirut … Our pilots are sitting in their cockpits, their aircraft facing north.”
The Israeli DM seems to be assuming an awful lot…. How many countries is Israel prepared to go to war with?
He expects the US will help Israel destroy Lebanon. That is what the carrier is there to do, or so they think.
why else would it be there
There are two carrier groups in the area. I have read that if a third carrier group shows up it would mean bad things will happen.
Israel wants Lebanon to the Litani River. More ethnic cleansing, more expansion of Greater Israel.
These monsters think they are on a roll.
The psychotic government of Israel wants territory from all surrounding countries, don’t think for a minute that the leaders in the region aren’t aware this.
The only monsters are Israel’s Judaophobic neighbors.
No,Hezbollah should abide by its agreements,or else not whine and run to the UN when it pays the price.
I love it. Israel is so smart and nice. It defends itself by taking military action only after the failure of “diplomatic means.” And “diplomatic means” means you vacate your own land when Israel tells you so, even if you have nowhere else to go. See how nice and smart? I want to become as nice and smart with my neighbors as Israel when I’m older. Except, I can’t get much more older and have no nuclear weapons to back up my “diplomatic means.”
Nuclear weapons paid for by Americans.
Israel acquired nuclear weapons way before American sponsorship-1966-1967.Some help from France, and a lot of good old brain work
To push in Lebanon”…Israel would “act with all the means at its disposal” to push Hezbollah back through military action.”
The US budget is at Israel’s disposal?
Hezbollah has not used its rockets. It is estimated that Hezbollah is in possession of about 100,000.
It has fired rockets at Israel numerous times-rockets can be met with fuel air explosives .
He wants to enforce UN Sec Council Resolution 1701.
Let’s also enforce 181, and put Israel back inside the 1948 borders that it authorized. That is the only authorization from the UN for any Israeli borders, and the US voted FOR it.
Or at least the 242 return to 1967 Lines that was part of the ceasefire ordered by the UN.
Enforce UN Resolutions! Great Idea!
181 remains the best hope for a lasting peace and security for the Jewish State. The Likud’s strategy of creating-facts-on-the-ground has brought Israelis neither.
get real.
Why are religius Jews getting beaten by extreme Zionists in Israel these days ?
That is not going to happen. The plan was trashed in 1948 when the Arabs invaded and lost to the new nation of Israel.
You’ve been lied to – extreme Zionists started the fighting in 1947. Massacre of Deir Yassin ring a Bell ?
Finally, if you reject 181 then you also reject Israel, since 181 is the basis for the creation of the Jewish state.
I never claimed that there was no fighting between Zionists and Arabs before Israel became a nation. What I am claiming that the Arab arm forces invading Israel after its creation destroyed the boarders that were set in 1948. Those boarders will never return.
The borders that were set in 1948 (actually, 1947, in UNR 181) remain the internationally recognized borders.
I suppose that could change. But it hasn’t yet.
Sure – wholesale massacres and ethnic cleansing as deliberate policy in 1947 and 1948 has long been exposed
https://balfourproject.org/classified-docs-reveal-massacres-of-palestinians-in-48-and-what-israeli-leaders-knew/
And Israel as a condition of admittance to the UN agreed to abide by all the UNSC resolutions.
181 isn’t a Security Council resolution. 242 and 338 are Security Council resolutions and have been met with no more than partial compliance.
The consequences of failure to comply are seldom sufficient to compel major changes in policy or behavior. The most serious consequence ever dealt for noncompliance was the suspension of South Africa from the General Assembly, which lasted for 20 years. SA continued to be a member of the UN and to participate in other UN agencies and projects during that time.
And, of course, if a member is guaranteed protection by a permanent member of the Security Council . . .
… so Israel should be expelled, no? being vastly more flagitious than SA.
Absolutely it should be. It should have been expelled long ago, and it would have been if the UN were allowed to operate as the principles and provisions of the Charter direct. But that was never really intended. The organization was always going to be a tool of the permanent members of the UNSC, who called themselves “the United Nations” long before the institution was founded in San Francisco.
Israel has shown what it feels about the UN by bombing UN facilities in Gaza.
Nahariyya, that is interesting. When Israel became a state there emerged the following joke in Israel based on the fact that the Nahariyya kibbutz had been founded by German settlers. The settlers demonstrated with banners that read in German (translated by me) “Israel OK but Nahariyya remains German!”
This can be translated as a “land grab” It is common knowledge in the ME that the Israeli government has territorial designs on Egypt’s Sinai, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, even the northern part of KSA. The Biden Administration’s obsessive love for everything Bibi must have the region nervous, the much isolated and broken Putin was given a 5-star welcome in the Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Poor Biden, Blinken and Sullivan can barely get a cup of tea when they visit, sad.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/putin-trots-around-middle-east-all-smiles-mbs-while-us-cant-secure-ukraine-funding
Look at you, cheerleading for your boyfriend the war criminal Vladimir Putin, your husband the corrupt theocratic dictator Mohammed Bonesaw Salman, and the terrorists in Hamas all in one single post.
Jake, Don Julio, Tim Burns has morphed into a 4th division of common horse sh*t. Sybll was fake, but you are the real thing. Seek help.
Israel has already grabbed land from Lebanon. The Golan Heights. Of course Russia must return Crimea to Ukraine but no one in Washington makes the same demand on Israel.
The Golan Heights are Syrian, not Lebanese.
Correct.
Two distinct localities – Land from Lebanon and the Golan Heights.
Not any more.
Russia should never return the Crimea to the gangsters in Ukraine destroying the country from the inside.
The people of Crimea should vote as to their future.
Dare to do it…?!
Or, in the immortal words of Harry Calahan, ….
If Israel does something crazy, they will have to tangle with the “army of G-d” that has 100,000 rockets. There is a chlorine plant in Tel Aviv that could be hit. Enough rockets could mess up the airfields, hence no jets could take off. If the craziness does ensue, look for us to intervene, and get two carriers sent to the bottom of the sea, taking with them 5,000 crew. I do think that Israel will do crazy by attacking Iran, perhaps using a tactical nuke on Iran. If that happens, look for the Arab countries that have signed agreements with Israel to tear them up. Israel will then be quite isolated. Forget about our Ukraine proxy war bringing on WWIII.
Self defense after massive provocations is not crazy,it is just and sane.
What do expect would happen if the rockets hit the chlorine plant? How many of those 100,000 rockets will get fired? Do you know how hard it is to knock out an airfield?
What this moron Gallant doesn’t understand is that Hezbollah can reduce Tel Aviv to rubble. This is what happens when, as Andrei Martyanov constantly repeats, you have military leaders “trained” by the West who don’t understand the real military balance – like the US military in Ukraine – because they are ignorant and unprofessional.
If we’re lucky, Hezbollah will inflict a stunning defeat on “Israel” leading to the Zionists being forced to surrender and being driven out of Palestine. Hopefully Hezbollah and the rest of the Resistance will also inflict a similar stunning defeat on the US when it involved itself in the conflict.
LOL. Hezbollarh with no air force and no armor is going to defeat Israel. That is to funny.
Hizbollah has already destroyed numerous Merkava tanks, in addition to the allegedly 15% or so of the active Israeli armor that Hamas has destroyed in the last two months.
But why am I bothering answering some Zionist cretin troll who has no comprehension of military matters? You and the other moron, Jake, are going to be so butthurt when Israel gets its ass handed to it.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0f01bc85c25bc95cb03969be6dd36523028e2f94eb386a0d3a9b557d66c5d897.jpg
In 1973 the Arab attacked Israel with 800,000 troops, 450 planes, 2900 tanks and 1700 artillery guns. How did that work out? And you expect Hezbollah to defeat Israel with maybe 50,000 infantry troops and bunch of rockets? Israel has 320 bombers, 50 attack helicopters, 1300 tanks and 1000 artillery guns.
Beirut, and Hezbollah’s masters to the east can also be reduced to radioactive slag. Britain was brutally bombed,yet its people kept a stiff upper lip went on fighting.
Israel can be reduced to slag even without nukes. And it will be if it uses nukes on anyone.
And who going to do that?
Hezbollah and all Arab/Muslim nations need anti aircraft systems in abundance to neutralize the terrorist IDF and their thirst for targeting civilian infrastructures hospitals, and any non military asset. Take away the air, and the IDF are done.
That was tried in 1973 in the Suez. Worked for a day, than Israel adapted.
All morality aside, this would be a supremely stupid move for Israel. Hezbollah has routinely taken those baby killers to the woodshed every time they step sideways in their direction. The IDF would be wise to stick to their strengths: bombing maternity wards and shooting farmers.
The only baby killers are Hamas.
That would be a mistake. Warfare 101: Never start a second war until the first is resolved.
Meanwhile,an Israeli farmer was just killed by an antitank rocket.Who is attacking who?
But first…..finish the Final Solution in Gaza.