Hezbollah publishes drone footage claiming to show surveillance of Haifa
Hezbollah has published a nine-minute-and-31-second video of what it said was footage gathered from its surveillance aircraft of locations in Israel, including the city of Haifa’s sea and airports. Haifa is 27km (17 miles) from the Lebanese border.
Hezbollah has sent both surveillance and attack drones into Israel in the last eight months, as it exchanges fire with the Israeli military in parallel with the Gaza war.
Hezbollah’s drone footage will be seen as failure for Israel’s aerial defence
There has been no reaction from the Israeli political or security establishment just yet [on Hezbollah’s drone footage of Haifa], but this will surely be seen as a wide failure in Israel’s aerial defence array.
Just in the last hour, the army released a statement saying they intercepted what they called three suspicious, hostile aircraft on Israel’s northern border.
But, if this was a drone that was able to fly over many areas of northern Israel, including the port in Haifa, and show several sensitive military targets like bases, military complexes, and iron dome batteries, it’s something the Israeli military is surely going to have to re-evaluate how exactly those air defence alarms go off.
We have heard from several Israeli officials yesterday after their meetings with the US Envoy Amos Hochstein. They’re saying they want to deter the threat on Israel’s northern border, they want to mitigate the situation so it doesn’t spiral out of control but that Israel again is ready for an all-out war.
Netanyahu just last week held a situational assessment and said the evacuations for the towns and settlements in northern Israel would be extended until at least the end of August.
‘In an all-out war, Hezbollah will be destroyed’: Israeli FM
Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz has responded to Hezbollah’s release of drone footage showing surveillance of the Israeli port city of Haifa.
“[Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah is bragging today that he photographed the Haifa ports, which are operated by huge international companies from China and India, and is threatening to damage them,” Katz said in a post on X.
“We are getting very close to the moment of deciding on changing the rules of the game against Hezbollah and Lebanon. In an all-out war, Hezbollah will be destroyed and Lebanon will be severely beaten.”
He added that Israel is determined to restore security to Israeli residents who live in the north in the region bordering Lebanon, whose lives have been disrupted by Hezbollah’s constant exchanges of fire with the Israeli army.
They can't even root out Hamas in their fully surrounded open air prison...
Hezbollah’s latest ploy: Has the main war front moved from Gaza to southern Lebanon?
Hezbollah’s release today of drone footage showing surveillance of the Israeli port city of Haifa is a signal to some within the Israeli security establishment that the major front of the war has moved from Gaza to Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, according to an analyst.
The war on that front is perceived by some in Israel as one where Hezbollah is holding “50,000 hostages”, Israeli residents of the north who cannot return to their homes there, Menachem Klein, an Israeli professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, told Al Jazeera.
Hezbollah’s alliance with Iran is also a major strategic threat that Israel will one day have to confront, if not now, he added.
However, Klein believes the Israeli administration’s tactic of using more and more force must change. “Israel must change its strategic thinking to think all on political solutions rather than using force,” he said.
Israeli military approves operational plans for Lebanon offensive
The Israeli military announced that operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon were “approved and validated”.
“As part of the assessment of the situation, operational plans for the attack in Lebanon were approved and implemented and decisions were made to continue accelerating the readiness of the forces in the field,” the military said in a statement.
The United States, in response, said it does not want to see a wider regional war in the Middle East, according to the Pentagon.
“I’m not going to get into hypotheticals and speculate on what might happen other than to say no one wants to see a wider regional war,” Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, told reporters when asked about Israel’s move.
Israel’s approval comes as US special envoy Amos Hochstein was in Lebanon today after meeting with Israeli leaders, to seek “urgent” de-escalation on the Israel-Lebanon border.
Israel’s military advantage over Hezbollah, Hamas no longer the same as before
Analyst Ramy Khoury says Hezbollah, with its release of a surveillance video of Haifa in Israel, is sending the message that Hezbollah’s capabilities “continue to expand, become more sophisticated”, and more able to “penetrate through Israeli defense systems”.
“This has been a steady process,” Khoury, a professor at American University of Beirut, told Al Jazeera, adding that the same thing was happening with Hamas.
“Their abilities have expanded to the point where the old advantage that Israel had over both of them in technology and heavy weaponry, air superiority, and all of those things, has been whittled down.”
He said the consequences of this were evident in Gaza where despite tens of thousands of Palestinians being killed, Israeli forces have not been able to “eliminate Hamas’ capacity to continue fighting”.
