A Hezbollah source tells the Al-Monitor news site that the senior Hezbollah leaders killed in an IDF strike on Friday were meeting to discuss plans to invade Israel in an October 7-style attack in response to the pager explosions.
President Isaac Herzog said much the same in a British TV interview earlier today.
The members of the elite Radwan Force were studying “plans for a ground invasion at the heart of the occupied territories,” the source tells Al-Monitor. (Hezbollah seeks to destroy Israel and sees all of its sovereign territory as “occupied.”)
Thousands of Hezbollah pagers and other communications devices blew up last week in an attack blamed on Israel. Israel has not commented.
The Israeli airstrike killed two of Hezbollah’s top leaders — Ibrahim Aqil and Ahmed Wahbi — and at least 14 others, many of them senior Radwan Force commanders, as they met in the basement of a Beirut residential building.
Speaking to Sky News earlier today, Herzog also said the meeting was aimed at cementing plans for an invasion of Israel.
“All of these leaders came together in order to launch the same horrific, horrendous attack that we had on October 7th by Hamas, by burning Israelis, by butchering them, raping their women, abducting and taking hostage people and little babies,” Herzog says.
“This is exactly the same plan they have been planning for years under the plans of the Empire of Evil of Iran,” he says.
The comments echo those of IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari on Friday after the strike.
“Aqil and the Radwan Force commanders who we attacked are the commanders who drew up and led the Hezbollah terror group’s plan, to be carried out on the day the order was given, to attack into the northern territory of the State of Israel — what they called ‘The plan to conquer the Galilee,’” Hagari said.
In this planned invasion, said Hagari, “Hezbollah intended to raid Israeli territory, occupy the communities of the Galilee, and murder and kidnap Israeli citizens — similar to what Hamas did on October 7.”
He added that “the commanders who we eliminated today” had been overseeing attacks on Israeli citizens since October 8, and planned to carry out more such attacks.
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