Israel publicly announced on national television that it had a map of specific Hezbollah military targets years before it launched major strikes against the terrorist group.
Though the two have been in conflict since last year, Hezbollah has taken some of its most major blows in recent weeks from Israel, which has conducted several airstrikes against the group’s targets throughout Lebanon. Benny Gantz, at the time the Israeli Defense Minister, publicly showed a classified map of Hezbollah targets in Lebanon to Fox News during an interview in 2021. (RELATED: ‘Keep F***ing Trying’: Biden Reportedly Demands His Team Secure Gaza Ceasefire Agreement As His Term Clock Runs Out)
“Let me show you something, which I think is very important,” Gantz told Fox News’ Trey Yingst before handing him a map in the 2021 interview. “This is a map of Lebanon. What you see there is ground forces, missiles, headquarters, launching sites, et cetera. Everything is aimed [at] civilian targets, and it is being conducted from civilian infrastructure.”
EXCLUSIVE: Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz shows Fox News a classified target map, revealing Hezbollah missiles amid civilian infrastructure https://t.co/fPisnRjtjs pic.twitter.com/fm4nOQ5yLm
— Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) March 4, 2021
“This is a target list for you?” Yingst asked Gantz after examining the map, which was blurred out by Fox News.
“This is a target map. Each one of them has been checked legally, operationally, and intelligence wise and we are ready to fight,” Gantz responded.
Israeli forces have conducted sweeping airstrikes against Hezbollah military targets in recent days, including against weapons storage sites and launch sites that were pointed toward Israel, according to Reuters. A senior Hezbollah commander was killed in an airstrike in Beirut on Tuesday, adding to the growing list of high-level Hezbollah operatives who have met similar fates at the hands of Israeli forces in recent months.
“Hezbollah today is not the same Hezbollah we knew a week ago. (It) has suffered a sequence of blows to its command and control, its fighters, and the means to fight,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Tuesday, according to Reuters. “These are all severe blows.”
Though casualty figures have been reported by the Lebanese Health Ministry, it doesn’t distinguish between civilians and terrorists, Reuters reported. The health ministry said that 569 people have been killed and 1,835 have been wounded in strikes since Monday morning, including 50 children.
Hezbollah and Israel have been adversaries for decades, but tensions have grown considerably worse since last year. Hezbollah started attacking Israel last October out of support for Hamas, which that month invaded Israel and killed approximately 1,200 people, starting a broader regional war.
Israel has since been engaged in cross-border skirmishes with Hezbollah, which have only grown in scale and severity as the war has dragged on. Israel is suspected of carrying a sweeping, precise attack against thousands of Hezbollah operatives last week by remotely detonating a score of their personal communications devices.
The U.S. and Western nations have grown concerned that the conflict will escalate and start yet another war in the Middle East, which has already been in turmoil given the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Gallant said last week that the time for a diplomatic solution with Hezbollah had passed because the terrorist group “continues to tie itself to Hamas and refuses to end the conflict,” according to Axios.
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