The deputy chief of the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah has warned that all of Israel, “even Tel Aviv,” is vulnerable to the organization’s immense arsenal of over 100,000 rockets.
In an interview published Saturday in the Arabic-language Iranian news outlet Al-Wefak, Hezbollah deputy secretary general Naim Qassem said, “The entire Israeli homefront is exposed, even Tel Aviv.”
He added: “There is no point in the Zionist entity that is not in the range of Hezbollah’s rockets.”
The comments came amid rising tensions on the Israeli-Lebanese border as the IDF on Saturday exposed another cross-border attack tunnel built by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon into Israeli territory.
It was the third tunnel found by the Israel Defense Forces and the second one it has fully exposed — precisely located, drilled into, and begun preparing for destruction — since the start last week of Operation Northern Shield to find and destroy such underground passages.
Another tunnel, which extends from the Lebanese village of Ramyeh, was located earlier but has not yet been subject to the aforementioned steps, for a total of three tunnels found so far.
In the interview with the Iranian outlet, Qassem said Hezbollah had managed to deter Israel from attacking Lebanon for the past 12 years.
“The Zionist enemy has been unable to carry out military actions against Lebanon since 2006 [the Second Lebanon War]. It has been deterred by the capabilities of the Islamic resistance in Lebanon. The Zionists, in their discussions, are not willing to endure [an assault by Hezbollah]. Therefore, the concept of a war against Lebanon is out of the question [for Israel].”
He added, “Even when they analyze and threaten, they say, ‘If Hezbollah attacks us’ they will react. [That is, they say] they won’t attack first. The rules of engagement that Hezbollah has created in Lebanon have made it very difficult for Israel to even consider launching a war against Lebanon.”
The Israel Defense Forces launched Operation Northern Shield, a concentrated effort to uncover and destroy border-crossing Hezbollah attack tunnels, on Tuesday. That day, troops uncovered their first tunnel, which originated inside the Lebanese village of Kafr Kila and penetrated Israeli territory south of the town of Metulla.
In addition, the military identified a second tunnel, which it said entered Israeli territory near the Israeli town of Zarit, across from the Lebanese village of Ramyeh. The IDF struggled to enter the tunnel, despite knowing its approximate location, and called on the UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL and the Lebanese military to destroy the tunnel on the Lebanese side of the border.
As with the tunnel near Metulla, on Saturday the military said it had fully exposed the third tunnel at its undisclosed location.
The discovery of the Hezbollah tunnels and the ongoing Israeli military operation to disable them has raised the specter of renewed conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
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