Despite daily ground raids & elimination of Hezbollah chief, Israel said to be on the verge of preemptive operation in Lebanon

Despite increasing the number of airstrikes and newly revealed daily ground raids in southern Lebanon, Israel is on the verge of ordering a large preemptive ground operation against Hezbollah, Ynet News reported Monday.

Military officials told the outlet that the government is close to ordering the military to conduct a short, preemptive operation to deter the terror group and erode its quickly growing military capabilities.

However, the morning after the elimination of Hezbollah Chief of Staff, Haytham Ali Tabatabai, saw no immediate escalation.

According to military sources cited by the Times of Israel, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) raised its alert level and strengthened air defenses for a possible rocket barrage fired as revenge by Hezbollah.

However, the Home Front Command has not issued any changes to its guidelines for civilians, indicating there was no intelligence of an imminent attack.

Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a snap drill at the northern border on Monday, claiming this had been planned beforehand.

The exercise is meant to “assess and improve the IDF’s readiness for a range of scenarios,” the military stated. It began with an inspection of the 210th “Bashan” Regional Division, which is deployed along the northern part of the Syrian border on the Golan Heights and the Mount Dov area on the Lebanese border.

Ynet News revealed on Monday that Israeli troops carried out some 1,200 ground raids over the past months, targeting Hezbollah sites around 21 frontline villages in southern Lebanon, mostly populated by Shia Muslims.

Military sources confirmed the extremely high pace of three to five cross-border raids for the first time in the report. The raids extended up to five kilometers into Lebanon, some even targeting sites in the second line of border villages to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure.

The report noted that the IDF purposefully guarded the extent of its activities until now, in an effort not to provoke Hezbollah to a response.

However, the terror group is said to be fully aware of the raids, and reportedly sent troops to clear rubble from detonated sites within hours. This has often been the background to the hundreds of airstrikes targeting what the IDF called “violations of the ceasefire terms” and efforts to rebuild infrastructure.

“Entire terror villages were created between 2006 and 2011,” an IDF official said, “prepared for the next war without any action on our part. Later, they built Radwan force invasion posts right on the border. That was supposed to be their advantage on the day of battle, but it turned against them when we destroyed that capability during Northern Arrows and in the follow-up missions from November 2024 until the agreement began taking effect in February.”

As part of the raids, the Galilee Division’s troops have killed around 100 of the around 350 Hezbollah terrorists killed this year. However, most of the border villages, which were largely destroyed by Israeli operations, still stand empty and are not being rebuilt.

An Israeli official noted that Israel’s priority is to it that way, ensuring that no terrorist infrastructure is rebuilt within five to ten kilometers of the border.

“Hezbollah excels at returning in civilian disguise to observe and track. This time must not repeat 2006. If we see an armed man seven or ten kilometers away, we eliminate him immediately, after confirming he isn’t a UNIFIL observer or Lebanese soldier.”

“If there’s a shepherd or supposed civilian wandering around, we don’t let them move freely,” the IDF said. “We immediately carry out a suspect-arrest procedure, and in some cases detain them for questioning. We’re in a shaping period. If Lebanon doesn’t implement real steps to limit Hezbollah, we’ll have to remain active and aggressive in the coming years, even at a cost to us.”

“The major long-term achievement must be disarming Hezbollah,” an IDF official said. “That may not be achieved by military force alone. We shouldn’t fall in love with the current situation. Diplomatic and military pressure must continue. Hezbollah is still militarily stronger than the Lebanese Army, and we must work to reverse that.”

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