After Hezbollah fired anti-tank missiles at an IDF outpost and IDF vehicles near Avivim on the northern border Sunday afternoon, Israel was contacted by Egypt, the US, and France and warned not to continue its retaliatory strikes, a senior official in Israel's security establishment said Monday.
"The man in the bunker will give a lot more speeches," the official said, referring to Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, who has been in hiding since the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
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"I don't care about that, as long as we [Israel] can continue to achieve our goals," the official added.
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri understands that his country is at risk of Nasrallah continues provoking Israel, the official said.
When asked if he thought that Hezbollah would consider Sunday's missile attack a sufficient response to last week's drone strikes, which took out major Hezbollah targets and embarrassed Nasrallah, the official said, "We are preparing for every scenario. If he keeps this up, he knows what awaits him."
The official explained that Israel's security and defense priorities, as laid out by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons; preventing Hezbollah from obtaining precision missiles; and preventing Iran from further entrenching itself in the region – including Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere.
"We are making diplomatic and operational efforts in a number of fields and areas to prevent these three things. Each one has a detailed action plan. We are carrying out a lot of actions. You only see the very tip of the iceberg. There are a lot of covert actions by the IDF and the Mossad, as well as diplomatic measures being taken to address these three goals," the official said.
"We are working with determination combined with responsibility. We don't act on a shim – it's part of a complete strategy. We have goals we want to achieve," he said.
Addressing recent developments on the northern border, the official said that Israel was handling developments there "with caution, even in the past few days."
"In the past few days, we were surrounded on multiple fronts. We needed to take action on a few different fronts within a 24-hour period. We operated with precision, just like we planned to. If we hadn't taken those actions, we could have wound up fighting a war we don't need," the official said.
As part of Sunday's clash with Hezbollah, the IDF reportedly staged an evacuation to make Hezbollah think that Israeli soldiers had been wounded in the attack. In fact, there were no wounded among soldiers or civilians.
"I'm surprised at the public discourse about [the fake evacuation]. Commanders in the field are instructed to use deception when fighting. I'm not going to discuss whether there was or was not a 'fake-out.' We do everything possible to prevent casualties. If the army uses deceptive tactics, that's good. We do everything we can to prevent casualties. In Israel, it's impossible to hide casualties, when there are any," the official said.
