Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened the “special security cabinet” in a late-night meeting Saturday night at the IDF headquarters (Kirya) in Tel Aviv.
The meeting was convened following a weekend in which the Israeli Air Force destroyed hundreds of rocket launchers and thousands of ready-to-fire rockets in southern Lebanon, and eliminated Ibrahim Aqil, chief of staff of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, together with 15 top Radwan commanders in Beirut. Aqil was directing the terrorist organization’s plan to invade the Galilee.
“Aqil and the commanders who were eliminated were among the architects of the ‘plan for the occupation of the Galilee,’ in which Hezbollah planned to raid Israeli territory, occupy the communities of the Galilee, murder and kill innocents, similar to what the Hamas terror organization carried out in the murderous massacre on October 7,” the IDF said in a statement.
Earlier this week Israel killed and wounded thousands of Hezbollah operatives throughout Lebanon and in some parts of Syria in a special operation that effectively transformed the terrorist army’s pagers and walkie-talkies into lethal bombs that detonated while being held.
IDF Chief of General Staff Herzi Halevi met on Saturday morning with the commanding officer and division commanders of Northern Command.
On Saturday evening IDF Home Front Command upgraded restrictions for Israelis living in Haifa and elsewhere in northern Israel due to the expectation that Lebanon’s Iranian proxy – Hezbollah – will launch an attack in response to the strikes. Around the same time, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant held a situation assessment together with IDF Chief of General Staff LTG Herzi Halevi, the director general of the Defense Ministry and additional senior defense officials.
