Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a warning to Iran and Hezbollah that “Israel knows what you’re doing, Israel knows where you’re doing it,” hours after Israel announced it had uncovered a terror cell in the Syrian Golan Heights.
The Hezbollah cell is “just the tip of the iceberg,” Netanyahu, who also serves as defense minister, said on Wednesday.
The Israel Defense Forces said earlier Wednesday that it had exposed a nascent Hezbollah cell established in a border village on the Syrian Golan Heights in recent months, and vowed to prevent the terrorist group from operating against Israel from Syrian soil, even at the risk of sparking a small-scale conflict.
The Iran-backed, Lebanon-based group has been trying to create a front in the Syrian Golan for years, but has struggled to gain a sufficient foothold in the southern border area. However, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s conquest of the border area this summer gave the regime-allied group an opportunity to again try to establish the necessary infrastructure with which it could threaten Israel near the border.
“This morning Israel exposed a Hezbollah terror network on the Golan Heights. Hezbollah is a terror organization. It’s a proxy of Iran. It does Iran’s bidding and this terror network is part of Iran’s aggression against Israel,” Netanyahu said in a video statement.
“So I have a clear message for Iran and for Hezbollah,” he added. “Israel knows what you’re doing, Israel knows where you’re doing it. What we’ve uncovered today is just the tip of the iceberg. We know a lot more.”
He warned: “Israel will continue to do all that’s necessary to defend itself. We will continue to use all means, overt and covert, to block Iran’s effort to use Syria, Lebanon and Gaza as forward bases for attacking Israel.”
In revealing the cell’s existence, the military said, “The network is new and currently focused on becoming familiarized with the Golan Heights area. It is intended to eventually control teams of Syrian operatives who will launch attacks against Israel.”
At this stage the Hezbollah plot — known within the organization as the “Golan File” — mostly involves collecting intelligence and recruiting operatives, but also has weaponry in its possession, mainly explosives, light arms, machine guns and antitank missiles, according to the IDF.
The military said the terror group may try to bring rockets, missiles and other weaponry into the area in the future, but is concerned that such munitions would be destroyed by Israeli strikes.
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