Netanyahu: IDF can strike emerging and immediate threats in Lebanon under new framework

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserts that Israel has freedom of action “to thwart any threats to IDF soldiers” in Lebanon, including what are defined as “emerging” threats, under the new US-brokered framework with Beirut.

“Our freedom of action is the freedom to thwart any threats to IDF soldiers. That is a clear directive [to IDF soldiers]. I have said it and repeated it: If you see a threat, act. Not only do you have the right to act — you have an obligation to act against an immediate threat,” the premier says during his Hebrew-language press conference.

Netanyahu claims that “when questions arose as to whether this remained in effect or not,” apparently referring to recent negotiations on the Lebanon ceasefire, he met with Defense Minister Israel Katz and with IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir to ensure that it would be emphasized as a priority.

“Under these directives,” he says, 200 Hezbollah terrorists have been killed over the past two weeks, including in incidents where there was not “an immediate threat in the sense of something right next to you,” but where soldiers identified emerging threats, such as when a group of troops “spotted seven [Hezbollah] terrorists entering a building.”

Netanyahu has reiterated that soldiers are free to respond to both immediate and emerging threats in recent days, after the US decided to include a ceasefire in Lebanon as part of the memorandum of understanding it reached last week with Iran, under which Jerusalem’s freedom of action was reportedly to become much more limited.