IDF urges vigilance as defense chiefs meet amid Hezbollah retaliation threat
Army says no changes to guidelines for civilians, but some cities open shelters as terror group vows revenge for exploding pager attack
The military said it was on alert Tuesday after Hezbollah threatened revenge and blamed Israel for a vast coordinated attack using the terror group’s own pagers that killed several and maimed thousands, as the sides appeared to inch closer to a major confrontation.
Israel did not claim responsibility for the stunning wave of explosions that rocked Hezbollah strongholds in both Lebanon and Syria, but the Israel Defense Forces indicated it was girding for a possible reprisal, even as it sought to keep a lid on fears of all-out war.
In a terse statement, the IDF said Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and top defense brass held consultations Tuesday evening “with an emphasis on readiness for offensive action and defense in all arenas.”
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s office later announced that he was meeting with Halevi and other senior military officials, without offering other details.
The army said there were no special instructions from Home Front Command, but urged public vigilance and suggested the situation could be fluid.
“We will update immediately on any change to guidelines,” it said.
The IDF statement was issued after Hebrew media outlets reported that local authorities in the north had been told by the Home Front Command that there was a possibility of escalation with Hezbollah.
In Holon, a suburb south of Tel Aviv, authorities said public shelters would be open “to reduce worries,” and a number of other cities announced similar measures or said they were raising security levels.
Hezbollah is thought to have a massive arsenal of some 150,000 projectiles, including long-range rockets and precision missiles. Experts say a full-scale Hezbollah attack would put the country’s air defenses to the test.
Separately, Hebrew media reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had huddled for several hours with security chiefs at the Defense Ministry Headquarters in the Kirya base in Tel Aviv.
The top defense officials were summoned for an emergency meeting with government officials, the reports stated, as they discussed how to best deal with a potential escalation with Hezbollah following the attack, which killed at least 9 people and wounded some 2,800.
Hezbollah said earlier in the evening that it holds Israel “fully responsible” for the detonation of the pagers, claiming that it had come to this conclusion after it probed the available information.
In a statement, the terror group vowed retribution for the “criminal aggression that also targeted civilians,” and said its “martyrs and wounded” were sacrificed in the name of its jihad “on the road to Jerusalem,” a phrase that it usually reserves for operatives killed in Israeli strikes.
The casualties included Hezbollah fighters who are the sons of top officials from the armed group, two security sources told Reuters. One of those killed was the son of a Hezbollah member of the Lebanese parliament, Ali Ammar, they said.
“This is not a security targeting of one, two or three people. This is a targeting of an entire nation,” senior Hezbollah official Hussein Khalil said while expressing his condolences for Ammar’s son.
Lebanese broadcaster Al Jadeed cited Ammar as promising consequences. “We will deal with the enemy in the language it understands,” he added.
The pager attack came hours after the Shin Bet security service said it had foiled an attempt by Hezbollah to kill a former senior Israeli security official using a planted explosive device that could be remotely detonated.
Reports in recent weeks indicate that Israel is increasingly flirting with the possibility of launching a full-scale attack on Hezbollah to end nearly a year of cross-border attacks that have left a swath of northern Israel uninhabitable.
Israel has responded to the attacks with a campaign of airstrikes and has held out hope for a diplomatic solution, but leaders in recent days have expressed their belief that only military action can bring an end to the clashes.
Hezbollah began launching near-daily attacks on the north on October 8 in a show of support for the Hamas terror group following its October 7 massacre in southern Israel, but claims it is not interested in war and that it will stop firing once the war in Gaza ends.
The government has faced rising pressure from both lawmakers and voters in recent weeks to deal with the threat posed to Israel by Hezbollah, as many fear that the north will remain under threat as long as the Iran-backed terror group’s forces are able to operate along the border.
Although the US has pushed for a diplomatic solution to restore calm to the Israel-Lebanon border, Gallant told special envoy Amos Hochstein in a meeting on Monday that the only way to ensure the safe return of Israel’s displaced northern communities would be “via military action,” as Hezbollah “continues to tie itself to Hamas, and refuses to the end the conflict.”
Washington’s commitment to a diplomatic solution was reiterated by White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre in the wake of the pager attack, which the US said it was still gathering information on.
Stressing that she wasn’t going to engage in speculation about the consequences that the pager attack could have on the tenuous situation in the Middle East, Jean-Pierre said that the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah had “gone on for way too long” and as such it “is in everyone’s interest to resolve it quickly and diplomatically.”
“We continue to believe that there should be a diplomatic solution to this,” she said, referring to the US’s desire to see a ceasefire-hostage release deal in Gaza, as it believes that it would also put an end to the clashes on the northern border, as well.
The border skirmishes have resulted in 26 civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of 20 IDF soldiers and reservists. There have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.
Hezbollah has named 443 members who have been killed by Israel during the ongoing skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon but some also in Syria. Another 79 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and dozens of civilians have also been killed.
