Israeli embassies on alert after Hezbollah threat

Israeli embassies worldwide increased their security alert over the weekend out of fear of a possible Hezbollah retaliation for last week’s suspected Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Sunday.

There was no independent confirmation of the report.

Israel has been bracing for a possible Hezbollah attack since the Lebanese Shit’ite terror group said on Wednesday that it had been hit by Israeli planes near the Syrian border earlier in the week.

Jerusalem has not confirmed involvement in the reported strike, though a high-ranking official told Time magazine that the Israel Defense Forces was behind the attack.

Lebanese sources said that Hezbollah was responsible for firing two Katyusha rockets that struck the Golan Heights on Saturday. The rockets, which hit open areas in northern Israel overnight, were said to be retribution for the strike attributed to Israel near the Lebanon-Syria border on Monday.

According to Maariv’s Lebanese sources, the attack aimed to hit an IDF outpost on Mt. Hermon, and Hezbollah put its troops on the border on alert.

Last week, Israel put its own troops on the northern border with Lebanon on high alert, shortly after Hezbollah threatened retaliation.

Civil defense in communities near the Lebanese border were instructed to be on alert for a Hezbollah reprisal, and farmers in the north were told to stay away from the border fence.

Lebanese media reported Monday that Israeli Air Force jets struck targets near the border with Syria in the Bekaa Valley.

Lebanon’s Daily Star reported that two trucks transferring missiles and a missile launcher were targeted in the raid as they were being transported from Syria to a Hezbollah storage facility. However, Hezbollah denied that a missile or artillery site was the target.

On Wednesday, Hezbollah acknowledged it was attacked by Israel and warned that it would strike back when and where it deemed appropriate.

The organization’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah, warned key military personnel of the possibility of war with the Jewish state, a Lebanese journalist with close ties to Hezbollah said on Thursday.

“In his recent speech, Hassan Nasrallah warned that Hezbollah’s readiness against the [Israeli] enemy has nothing to do with other battles,” Ibrahim al-Amin, editor of Lebanon’s al-Akhbar daily wrote in a column. “What he did not say publicly, he told his party’s military personnel in closed meetings where he called them to action, saying that the resistance [Hezbollah] may be forced to wage a battle on three fronts at the same time: in Syria, inside [Lebanon], and against the [Israeli] enemy.”

Hezbollah, considered an Iranian proxy, has been accused in the past of targeting Israeli assets abroad, including a bus bombing in July 2012, that left five Israelis and a local bus driver dead, and bombings of the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in the 1990s that killed scores.

Also Friday, the Lebanese government lodged a formal complaint with the United Nations over the strike, demanding that Israel be forced to comply with UN Resolution 1701, which was intended to resolve the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.