IDF: Hezbollah was planning to use homes in southern Lebanon as ‘staging grounds for Oct. 7-style invasion’

In an English-language statement as Israel begins a limited ground operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon, IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari says the terror group was planning to use villages near the border for “staging grounds for an October 7-style invasion into Israeli homes.”

“Hezbollah turned Lebanese villages next to Israeli villages into military bases already for an attack on Israel,” he says.

Hagari says the terror group had planned “to invade Israel, attack Israeli communities and massacre innocent men, women and children. They called this plan, ‘Conquer the Galilee.'”

“We will not let the 7th of October happen again on any one of our borders,” he vows, almost a year after some 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages, mostly civilians, amid acts of brutality and sexual assault, sparking the ongoing war in Gaza.

“Hezbollah had prepared to use those villages — as staging grounds for an October 7-style invasion…into Israeli homes. Hezbollah planned to invade Israel, attack Israeli communities, and massacre innocent men women and children.”

????Watch the full statement by IDF Spox. RAdm.… pic.twitter.com/gHnKWSPGDv

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 1, 2024

Hagari points to UN Resolution 1701 from 2006, which declares that Hezbollah is barred from maintaining a military presence south of the Litani River, which lies about 30 kilometers (around 20 miles) from Lebanon’s southern border.

“Eighteen years after 1701, Hezbollah is the world’s largest non-state army, and southern Lebanon is swarming with Hezbollah terrorists and weapons,” Hagari says.

“If the state of Lebanon, and the world, can’t push Hezbollah away from our border, we have no choice but to do it ourselves,” he says, while reiterating that Israel’s war is with the Iran-backed terror group and not the Lebanese people, and that the IDF is taking measure to prevent civilian harm.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said yesterday that Beirut is ready to fully implement Resolution 1701 and deploy the Lebanese army south of the river.