Israel will not tolerate rocket fire from Lebanon, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Tuesday after two rockets were fired into Israeli territory early in the morning.
“I say this sharply and clearly: We will not allow harm to Israel’s sovereignty and security,” he said during a visit to Ma’alot-Tarshiha in the Upper Galilee several hours after the rocket fire. “Whoever tries to harm us will pay a painful price.”
“Lebanon is on the verge of collapse, like any country in which Iran bases itself,” Bennett said. “Its citizens were taken hostage by [Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei and [Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan] Nasrallah for the sake of Iranian interests... This is unfortunate, but we will not accept a spillover of the situation in Lebanon into Israel.”
The two rockets were fired at northern Israel from Lebanon at around 4 a.m. Tuesday morning, setting off incoming rocket sirens in communities along the border, including Rosh Hanikra, Shlomi, Kibbutz Kabri (near Nahariya) and Hanita.
One rocket was intercepted by the Iron Dome air-defense system, and the other fell harmlessly in an open field, the IDF said. There were no casualties or damage, and there were no special instructions for residents, it said. In response, the IDF fired tank shells toward Hamoul Valley from where the rockets had been fired, it said.
Lebanon was responsible for the rocket fire, Defense Minister Benny Gantz said.
מי שנושא באחריות לירי הלילה היא מדינת לבנון שמאפשרת פעולות טרור משטחה. מדינת ישראל תפעל מול כל איום על ריבונותה ואזרחיה ותגיב בהתאם לאינטרסים שלה, בזמן ובמקום הרלבנטיים.
— בני גנץ - Benny Gantz (@gantzbe) July 20, 2021
“Lebanon is responsible for the nighttime firing because it allows terrorist acts from inside its territory,” he said. “The State of Israel will act in the face of any threat to its sovereignty and its citizens and will respond in accordance with its interests at the relevant time and place.”
Israel wants to see a “prosperous, peaceful and stable Lebanon,” Gantz said later at Tel Aviv University’s Cyber Week cybersecurity conference, adding that the situation is worsening because of Hezbollah and other terrorist groups that are acting against the interests of Lebanese citizens.
“Israel extended a helping hand and offered humanitarian aid to Lebanon,” he said. “But every security threat will be met with an iron fist from the same hand that was extended.”
Lebanon was in a state of collapse, and Hezbollah had a role in that, but Israel will not accept any sort of rocket fire due to that internal state of affairs, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi said.
“We will respond in an overt or covert way, or both together, to all violations of our sovereignty from Lebanon – whoever it is,” he said.
The attack came several hours after clashes on the Temple Mount between police and Muslim protesters on Tisha Be’av and ahead of Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice).
The rocket fire also came a year after a junior Hezbollah operative was killed in an alleged Israeli airstrike in Syria, an attack for which Hezbollah vowed to take revenge.
In May, during Operation Guardian of the Walls, a dozen rockets were fired into Israel from the same area in Lebanon. Several people were injured while running to find shelter.
For the first time since the Second Lebanon War in 2006, incoming rocket sirens were activated in the Lower Galilee and Haifa’s bayside suburbs of Kiryat Bialik and Kiryat Motzkin after four rockets were fired.
Several days earlier, six rockets were fired from Rachaya Al Foukhar, north of Kfarchouba in southern Lebanon. They all landed inside Lebanese territory, the IDF said, adding that one of them might have reached Israel. In response, the IDF fired more than 20 tank and artillery shells toward the source of the rocket launches.
It is still unclear who fired the rockets early on Tuesday morning, but the IDF believes it was the same Palestinian militants who fired the rockets in May. Hezbollah is not believed to be behind the rocket fire.
The Lebanese army said three Grad rocket launchers were found in Al Qulaya’ah, “one of them with a missile prepared for firing, and it was then disabled by specialized army units,” Lebanon’s MTV News reported.
The United Nations peacekeepers said in a statement: “UNIFIL radar monitored the firing of rockets from the northwest area of Qalila towards Israel and then spotted artillery fire from the Israeli army.”
UNIFIL, which opened an investigation into the incident, said it was “in direct contact with the Lebanese army and Israel” and is “urging maximum restraint to avoid further escalation.”
With the Lebanese economy in a free fall, the IDF is concerned that there may be an increase of incidents along its northern border, Col. Raz Haimlich, commander of the Artillery Corps Fire Brigade 411th “Keren” Battalion, told The Jerusalem Post in a recent interview.
“The Lebanese economy is not good, and that can lead to things happening on the border,” he said.
Haimlich’s battalion has responded to several incidents along the Lebanese border, including during the recent fighting with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, when Lebanese rioters damaged the border fence and crossed into Israel near Metulla.
The rocket fire on Tuesday came shortly after Israel was said to have struck targets near Al-Safirah in Syria’s Aleppo province. The strikes targeted a weapons depot belonging to Iranian-backed militias inside Syrian Army bases, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.