[NAHARNET] Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Sunday that the military was stepping up its strikes targeting Hezbollah in southern Leb
 ...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
near the Israeli border.
"Not only are we defeating the enemy, but we are destroying them in all the villages along the border, in the places that Hezbollah planned to use as launchpads for attacks against Israel," Gallant told troops during a visit to the border.
The Israeli military presence in the border area was "overwhelming the terrorists," he said.
Gallant's comments came after Lebanese official media reported 14 Israeli strikes within minutes on the border village of Khiam, and as Israel kept hammering Hezbollah targets elsewhere in Lebanon.
The defense minister said the intense military action in Lebanon since late September could eventually allow Israelis displaced by the violence to return home.
"Our goal is to completely clean the area (of Hezbollah) so that Israel's northern communities may return to their homes and rebuild their lives," Gallant said.
He also said that Hezbollah prisoners captured by Israeli forces "have informed us of the great fear felt" among group members, adding that "Hezbollah is collapsing."
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant tells IDF troops that Hezbollah operatives captured and interrogated by Israel are “terrified” and that the Iran-backed terror group is “collapsing.”
“The prisoners tell us what’s happening, that they’re terrified because they know that they don’t have what it takes to deal with what’s happening. Not in terms of strength, combat ability, precision or determination,” he tells troops of the IDF’s 98th Division.
“This whole great formation they call Hezbollah is collapsing.”
The IDF last week published footage of an alleged member of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces being interrogated about the terror group’s plans in southern Lebanon and the current state of its operations.
“We are moving from a situation of defeating the enemy village by village, to destruction — blowing up the tunnels and the ammunition depots, and dismantling Hezbollah,” he tells troops.
“The result is that in every place that Hezbollah was waiting and preparing to raid [Israeli] border town, there are IDF soldiers.”
“Our goal is to completely clean this area so that residents can return to their homes and their lives,” he says, referring to Israel’s recently added war goal of returning tens of thousands of northern residents who have been displaced since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack, when Hezbollah began attacking northern Israel on a near-daily basis the day after. 
|
