The IDF on Thursday publicly took credit for assassinating two senior Hezbollah terrorists and a third minor player, including the mastermind of the March 2023 Megiddo terrorist attack, which shocked the country at the time.
One of those killed by the IDF, senior Hezbollah Radwan commander Ali Muhammad al-Dabas, was the mastermind of that terrorist plot and also managed significant aspects of the Lebanese terrorist group’s attacks on Israel since October 7.
The second Hezbollah operative killed by the military was his deputy, Hassan Ibrahim Issa. The identity of the third one is either unknown or was not considered important enough to name.
Other lower-ranking Hezbollah operatives were also reportedly killed in other IDF attacks, bringing the group’s losses to around 202 fighters, without counting dozens more Hamas fighters killed in Lebanon.
Part of what was unusual here was the IDF taking public credit for the assassinations. The military has only taken public credit in a minority of the assassinations of top Hezbollah officials, usually leaving hints but not wanting to antagonize the group into risking a larger conflict.
Hezbollah attacks IDF Northern Command
Following Hezbollah’s attacks on IDF Northern Command in Safed and an IDF base near Meron, which killed an Israeli soldier and wounded eight others, Israel has significantly upped the stakes.
On Wednesday, the IDF struck targets deeper into Lebanon than it had so far and also struck a much wider number of areas than it typically does when retaliating.
Moreover, earlier Thursday, IAF fighter jets struck dozens of Hezbollah targets in the area of Wadi Saluki in southern Lebanon. The military said it also hit the terrorist group’s infrastructure in the area of Labbouneh earlier in the day as well as a Hezbollah military structure in Taybeh overnight.
This made the assassinations later Thursday at least the third major round of attacks by the IDF since the latest escalation started, making it clear that the army is being bolder in trying to deter Hezbollah from firing deeper into Israel as well as to convince it to move its forces back to near the Litani River.
Senior Israeli officials have so far conditioned returning around 80,000 residents of the North to their homes near the border with Lebanon on moving Hezbollah’s forces away from the border either by negotiations or by a larger war, if necessary.
For example, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant spoke at an emergency preparedness meeting Thursday afternoon, describing the need for the IAF to take action against Hezbollah on the northern front, the evacuation situation, and the status of emergency supplies of critical infrastructure and aid to residents in the area.
“We have no interest in war, but we must prepare,” he said. “The planes that are currently flying over the skies of Lebanon have targets, and they know how to change the attack from place to place. In the event of a war, the price for the State of Israel is heavy, but they would be catastrophic for Lebanon and Hezbollah. We should take into account the old Roman proverb that says: ‘He who wants peace will prepare for war.’”
The defense minister added that the IDF could attack "not only at 20 kilometers [from the Israel-Lebanon border], but also at 50 km. and [even] in Beirut - and anywhere else."
Addressing the Gaza front, he said: “At the end of the day, Hamas as a military and governmental organization will not exist in the Gaza Strip. This is a government decision, and the security establishment will fully implement it. The time will be long, but in the end, this process will end for the simple reason that we cannot live with a reality in which our women and children are killed and kidnapped.”
Hezbollah did not back down, however, firing dozens more rockets on Kiryat Shmona and several other Galilee villages. There were no reports of injuries on the Israeli side.
There were also initial reports about rockets being fired at Acre, but later reports said that was a false alarm.
Hezbollah on Thursday said Israel would “pay the price” for killing 10 civilians, including five children, in southern Lebanon, the deadliest day for Lebanese civilians in four months of hostilities across the Lebanese-Israeli border.
The United Nations urged a halt to what it called a “dangerous escalation” of the conflict, which has played out in parallel to the Gaza war and fueled concerns of a wider confrontation between the Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel.
Seven of the alleged civilians were killed in Nabatiya late on Wednesday when a rare Israeli strike on the southern city hit a multistory building, sources in Lebanon said. The dead were from the same extended family and included three children.
It followed an earlier attack that killed a woman and two children in the village of al-Sawana at the border, who were buried on Thursday.
“The enemy will pay the price for these crimes,” Hezbollah politician Hassan Fadlallah told Reuters, saying his group had a “legitimate right to defend its people.”
A source familiar with Hezbollah’s thinking said the attack on Nabatiya marked an escalation but was still within unwritten “rules of engagement” by which much of the violence has been contained near the border so far.
Mohanad Hage Ali, of the Beirut-based Carnegie Middle East Center, said while Israel appeared to be “testing the limits” of those rules of engagement, Hezbollah was signaling it “wants to keep this as confined as possible.”
Jerusalem Post Staff and Reuters contributed to this report.